


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (misc and multi-season meta)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajonesblog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 79,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. A Very Long Ramble On The POV of the Destiel Narrative And Who Has It. The Answer May Surprise You

Okay I made this massive ramble about Destiel mostly to cheer myself up immediately after the Cas-less 10x04 and never posted it because it was 10 miles long with no point because I literally just needed to write it to clear my brain out. With the pre-emptive 10x05 panic ongoing in some people’s in-boxes as a more abstract debate about canon Destiel in general I figured now is as good a time as any to contribute to the discussion/debate about Destiel subtext by tidying this up and clearing it out of my drafts. It’s basically just a really long rant informed off my casual viewer experience plus everything I’ve learned about the show over the summer stirred together into an attempt to make a coherent narrative of, well, the narrative: I originally wrote it to explain to myself why we weren’t getting any Destiel from Dean any more and probably won’t for a long time (don’t yell at me, read it if you are alarmed by that statement :P) but I’m going to alter what I wrote to factor in the fact we know the ship and shippers are pointed at in 10x05 as my attempt to join in the conversation. And point out that that’s still not getting Destiel from Dean. ( _don’t yell at me_ )

I emphasise my casual viewer experience because I think it’s really important that I watched from pre-Cas days right up to the end of season 9 before I finally snapped and couldn’t believe the crap I was seeing on my screen any more: I am one of the most unwilling, fed up pro-canon Destiel shippers because my life would be so much more productive without it, so I figure my opinion might just be my opinion but at least it’s grumpy and grudgingly won which has to count for something. :P 

It’s long so you can also just read the bolded text and get the jist of my argument but I put in a few lame 3am jokes so you’re missing out if you skip.

In season 4 the “love story” was something from the  **point of view of the fans only** : an interpretation of how Cas rebels which is awesome for early shippers but not necessary to understand or drive the plot. I’m always leaning on the side of Destiel springing out of totally unintentional actor intensity combined with the plot just making it look the way it does.

Season 5 is more self-aware if obliquely, and Destiel starts to be something you could say is being given to us from the  **point view of the show** : I think some of the weirder instances of long-stares and “no you hang up first” moments were a joking hark back to the largely unintended shippiness that bloomed in season 4. Destiel at this point is still basically nothing but chemistry and story structure happily putting them in a really good place for being shipped if you want to see it that way, mixed with a few weird open-ended questions which are never intended to be answered and may not all have been intended to be asked, like “why does endverse Destiel seem weirdly plausible as well as crazy hot?” “Was that fan fiction gap in Free to be You and Me leading anywhere after the whole ‘won’t let you die a virgin’ comment?” “What’s up with Dean’s unique brand of lashing out at Cas with 'Last person who looked at me like that…’” etc. It’s the perfect crack ship in season 5 with enough interaction and structure in-show to fuel the fire, but even with the emotional development between them by the end of the apocalypse, it’s still only romantic if you choose to see it that way, or when you return later with your shipper goggles on to find the building blocks of their relationship.

By  **season 6 Destiel is clearly lodged in the mind of the show**. They have to be aware of it based on the content they give us and it’s being openly pushed at the viewers rather than things being left open, but the approach is not serious and  **they don’t intend to take the ship seriously**. We get overt teasing right from Cas’s reintroduction and the whole “more profound bond” thing (played for comedy in the scene even if it’s become a romantic catchphrase), and most noticeably we have Balthazar being all “angel who’s in love with you”, and a raft of other jokes and implications, which all builds up to the glory of “Cas, get out of my ass.” I always see the Destiel jokes up to and especially including 6x19 as the show gloriously dancing through the valley of accidental/intentional queerbaiting with nothing to lose because they could not have been thinking about canon anything with the direction the plot was going so why not joke about it when that’s what some people are apparently tuning in to see?

While season 6’s story is rooted firmly in Dean’s point of view, **season 6 Destiel is not something we’re seeing from Dean’s point of view**  any further than the fact he’s present for the unusually intense staring matches of that season with the omnipresent chemistry.  **It’s missing the storytelling element of it being given to us through either of the characters involved as plot so it’s still not a narrative**. Retrospectively once again some things become more shippy with knowledge of the end of the season, but watching through fresh it is not a story you are intended to follow, and general audience types are not going to have been looking out for it, and even if they were prompted to re-watch after Cas’s betrayal, that’s a much more obvious plot to follow than “he’s doing it for Dean because he was too sexy raking leaves for Cas to interrupt”.

Oh yeah. Destiel comes crashing into the “holy crap, they’re not joking” realm with **6x20, and the first true *narrative* Destiel**  - writing which lays it into the subtext and not only asks you to take it seriously but makes possibly romantic feelings an integral part of the plot - **starts with Cas’s POV** : noticeably his POV after a season which adhered to Dean’s perspective like glue up to that point thanks to Soulless!Sam and pissed off season 6 Cas hiding things and both of them being unreliable and useless as potential narrators. Letting Cas tell it after the season so far is opening the floodgates to the character, and asking us to trust his emotions, though definitely not his actions, especially considering it’s probably the last time we get Cas in a half-way approachable state of mind basically until Purgatory as he’s still grappling with taking the final plunge.  **His reliability as an *emotional* narrator is key to the episode**.

This is the first episode where we get a serious, *painful* plot where  **the storytelling revolves entirely around Cas’s emotions for Dean and Dean’s emotions for Cas**  and not much more when it boils down to it. The reveal about Crowley came the episode before and the following episodes advance the plot, and honestly could have included the few relevant plot details we learned about Crowley’s plan in TMWWBK without stretching much to get the information in. I’ve read that Edlund specifically asked or insisted on having this episode to make things fair on Cas: it is literally an insert to sort out his so-far-misrepresented character.

I think its also important that the season leading up to it was so free with the Destiel jokes, either as a contrast or to have the concept in your mind, if as humour. The whole episode is serious emotional exploration and character building: we see all the most painful moments of that episode from Cas’s POV and we see Dean (our usual point of view character) struggle with how much Cas means to *him* from Cas’s invisibly watching POV, which also provides us with some of the most longing “watched him rake leaves” moments of the show *she says like there were other watched-rake-leaves moments that were slightly less longing*.

After that, the show swings  **back around to Dean’s POV, but now Destiel Mode has been unlocked**. From here we get it as  **a sustained but firmly background narrative**  mostly lurking in the depths of his other character development through season 7 with a different incident for him to feel guilty about hastily pasted on top. Yet Cas is Dean’s biggest trauma and **with Cas written out as dead, it’s all on Dean to carry the subplot could-be-romantic storyline**. Now that Cas has caused serious emotional damage to Dean his emotional storyline through the whole season is rooted some way or another in what Cas did in season 6.

Honestly from a storytelling perspective, the fact that Cas was supposed to be permanently written off for a little while is the best thing because  **the approach might have been very different if they knew he was coming back**  and were more interested in teasing that than exploring what it did to Dean to lose him. Things like Jensen making Dean keep the trenchcoat and the rawness of his loss were allowed, because it was meant to be an open wound and TMWWBK had accidentally canonised the depth of their relationship that had, an episode before, been a butt joke. Accidental as in, I guess they didn’t expect the emotional impact to mean more than showing how deep the betrayal understandably went to Dean, and so they let us see that. Cas was supposed to have the one random viewpoint thing and then his POV wouldn’t matter any more.

Anyway, all that accidental serious character development abruptly becomes relevant when Dean is allowed to hand the trenchcoat back to a fully-alive Cas, a moment that could only happen because they’d let the earlier moment in because Cas was perma-dead. Season 7 wraps up with the emphasis on the need for them to make things right, cemented by the two of them being thrown into Purgatory together. They’ve been singled out for an intense year of couple’s therapy by the storyline.  **The very act of separating them out puts the Destiel story on both of them, makes it important that they are restarting from the same place with the soft reboot of the show, and that’s how we go into season 8.**

Season 8 keeps Destiel in  **Dean’s viewpoint to begin with, as a steady and consistent narrative like with season 7** , from being messed up about Cas in Purgatory to the way he reacts when Cas returns, to the long angsty gap filled with Dean praying tearfully when we haven’t seen Cas for a while. It’s about Dean trying to understand Cas:  _Talk to me_.

And we get Cas’s viewpoint again starting with him showing Dean what really happened at the end of their time in Purgatory.  **For the first time since 6x20 Cas’s viewpoint is valid again** , and in fact in him showing Dean what actually happened in Purgatory is presented as  **the more reliable viewpoint** , a stark contrast to crazy!Cas. The show is finally giving him back **the right to help tell the story** , after his one previous brush with it.

At the same time we’re quickly introduced to Naomi, and  **minutes after Cas’s viewpoint is presented as valid, that’s dragged away from him again** : he can’t remember the meeting with her, his actions and decisions are compromised.  **And so we are led to our second episode where Cas’s viewpoint is not just there, but pivotal and based in an emotional arc as much as a plot arc** : 8x17. I’m noticing a pattern here with rare genuine Cas POV and the importance to Destiel of his episodes…

Yes, the point of view in Goodbye Stranger is mostly all Dean in the meat of the episode, but  **Cas’s struggle to reclaim the narrative for himself forms the structure of the episode** : he is the POV for the cold open: we start following Dean thinking it’s his point of view, but that idea is violently stabbed, and we start with a clear demonstration of Cas having zero agency for himself or his ability to be in charge of the narrative and as a bonus that’s illustrated by a Dean-centric genocide. Just like in 6x20 we’re shown in the opening moments that this is going to be us finding out what’s up with Cas after his conspicuous absence - we’re being told his story only this time he’s fighting for his right to even take part in it.

The flashes to Naomi’s office interrupt the narrative throughout, where we see the genuine Cas trying to reclaim any agency over his actions. We also get a viewpoint scene from him alone with Meg, and no influence from Naomi, where he is surprisingly emotionally open. **We’re being allowed to see that his viewpoint is part of the story** , separate from what Dean can observe, and is therefore **important in its own right**.

Then, the Crypt Scene.  **It’s the flashes to Naomi’s office which make the scene when deciding who’s carrying the narrative. Dean is a helpless passenger**  to being killed or not killed - he refuses to fight back and leaves the resolution of the scene with Cas. It’s Cas’s emotional arc which has all the bearing on what actually happens, and therefore since the weight of the storytelling happens through him and not necessarily Dean, I’d say it should be seen as Cas’s POV, although the way it’s shot in the fight spreads the emotional weighting between the two of them, such as the camera angle looking up at Cas when Dean is kneeling. However he’s the one offering up the  ~~I love you~~  I need you, and it’s Cas’s reaction to it which is key to the scene.  **Once again as in 6x20 the most painfully Destiel moment is the first powerfully emotional Cas-led scene since then and a statement of him asserting his point of view on the story.**  No wonder both episodes caused a surge in Destiel shipping. When we get Cas’s POV things get real fast, and season 8 so far for Cas has been about the right to own that point of view.

After that, Naomi’s influence is gone and  **Cas is a valid POV character once more.**  We see him on the bus at the end of the episode and that moment serves to illustrate that he’s free, he’s going somewhere, and we’re finally going to be along for the ride. We get an episode cut with uncompromised Cas viewpoint stuff to back up the fact we can now see things from his perspective. On the other hand, **during this time Cas is not the Destiel viewpoint character**. His storyline is the tablet, running away from angels, getting caught by Crowley… Blah blah, no Destiel. **It’s all on Dean again**  in the episodes in between, from the whole “Cas dinged you up pretty good…” “What, my feelings?!” bit, through “I know you’re hoping Castiel will return to you… I only wish he felt the same way” to Dean being the one angrily sulking with Cas when they finally get him back:  **he’s the one who’s been carrying the emotional burden**  again, and  **while Cas’s feelings have been firmly re-established to exist, they’re not being poked and prodded at**. He’s said “I don’t know” when asked “what broke the connection” and this is pivotal for later and for his general obliviousness here. He literally doesn’t know and thanks to the direction he’s pushed in season 9 and especially 10 we can assume this is actually true and he lacked the ability to deal with or understand the feelings that broke the connection. Understanding the full scope of love is repeatedly emphasised to be a human thing.

 **Until Cas comes for him in 8x23, Dean’s not given any overt Destiel narrative**. Cas goes off on his pie-rampage before he is picked up by Metatron, which quickly devolves into drinks with Dean while waiting for Cupid. **I think this scene is equally important to both of them and for the first time they’re both telling the Destiel story at the same time** , both their emotional character arcs for the season converging. It lasts about 5 minutes and then they’re torn apart, and Cas is cut off from Dean.

 **Season 9 opens with both of them given massive roadblocks to the story they were telling**. The story specifically relating to Destiel is still happening to both of them, to various degrees. Cas’s storyline is about being hurt by Dean, Dean’s is about unwillingly but necessarily hurting Cas. Cas stays off the Destiel narrative for most of 9x01 and 9x03, Dean spends most of the latter episode in a panicked hunt for Cas. Dean attempts to patch up booting Cas out in  **9x06, the episode which writes the guidebook on Destiel and has equal POV and equal sharing of the narrative and despite the downer ending it’s an optimistic statement on their emotional path**  in that it shows the care and attraction is still there. It’s short-lived hope:  **9x09 appears to kill off the blooming narrative on Cas’s part, with the stolen grace**  ruining everything immediately after we had tipsy human!Cas winking at Dean and Dean being so awful in response I’m honestly not sure Gadreel didn’t pop up to spare Sam watching any more of it.  **Road Trip is our last hurrah and it’s from Dean’s POV:**  Cas and Dean relate to each other and it’s beautiful. **This is the last time Dean has the Destiel narrative on him at the point of writing**. He calls Cas to help him, and emotionally leans on him, but in the end walks away. Cas is left helplessly watching, as Dean basically slips through his fingers.

If that sounds bad, you’re going to hate me when I say  **I don’t think the narrative has been back in Dean’s hands since he took the Mark of Cain**  and that’s possibly going to be a continuing trend judging by the now what… 18 episode stretch since then?  _Cain_  did a better job of carrying the torch for the Destiel narrative in that episode by telling us the Colette story. Cas worked on bonding with Sam and the narrative was largely missing from his side of First Born, totally absent on Dean’s side.

 **Destiel dives into (powerful) subtext for the rest of season 9** , appearing literally in the background of Cas stuff in Captives. Dean may be subtextually affected by it, still seeing monster of the week cases which have some relevance to his long-term desires and short-term problems. Cas doesn’t meet Dean again until the end of Meta Fiction, where their largest interaction is establishing that the Mark is a Serious Problem.  **Meta Fiction’s narrative does offer some Destiel in its plot structure but this episode, if it’s from anyone’s POV, is from *shudder* Metatron’s.**  He sets everything up, sets the terms of the deal at the end, and picks the song to play over the end montage.  **Metatron might aggressively not ship Destiel, but he’s 100% aware of it, and he’s writing the story**  and that’s pretty much why after that episode I went from casual mindless shipper to one of the “okay it’s canon now, how the hell did I miss this?!” people. :P  **This was the moment I realised the show had taken Destiel out of the hands of Dean and Cas and taken it back into its own point of view** , but this time instead of jokes it became **part of the serious plot sustained over several episodes.**

 **Metatron, as the voice of the show,**  constructs the scenario in 9x22 which leads to “he’s in love… with humanity!” and sets the trap in 9x23 which leads to “it was all about saving Dean Winchester.” Metatron is the one who **flies the Destiel flag for the whole last part of the season**  while despite interactions with each other and subtext galore,  **Dean and Cas are way too busy with their own stories to write one together, OR to write one alone.**  If we go with the season 10 premise of “human things”, Cas is also reasonably full of grace, and Dean is beginning the descent out of humanity: neither has the full ability to love the other, and so the narrative becomes weirdly buoyed along by the villain from the sharp end of the season and, of all things, the hilariously blatant 6x20 dialogue rip-off in Bloodlines. Like seriously. What. Anyway it keeps the Destiel story rolling even when Dean AND Cas are completely neglecting it themselves. **A few smiles and a hug aren’t the same as narrative weight: it’s a smoopier version of plotless season 4 eye-sex until the final moments of season 9, when everything comes together, narratively.**

And so we get to season 10.  **Dean hasn’t been a driving force in his relationship with Cas for over half a season. He’s now 100% disconnected from *any* of his story lines** , but we only see him actively engaging in not hunting and actively not caring about Sam. **Cas is only there by omission: he is not mentioned by anyone in Dean’s presence or by Dean himself for 4 episodes** , including 9x23 after Dean is locked in the dungeon. The only indication of Cas in his storyline at all is the “Angelz” strip club he goes to in 10x02, more background details and subtext. Dean has never been more distanced from Cas and anything remotely related to Cas, even when Cas was long-term dead. You could argue that season *two* has more Destiel subtext from Dean’s POV thanks to Houses of the Holy introducing angels and Dean’s weird relationship to them (I’m not going to argue that but yeah :P).  **It’s probably more reminiscent of the end of season 9**  where Cas has no time for Dean and the closest in *his* story we get is a brief stop at his fake Heaven with Dean-reminiscent imagery, but no narrative Destiel  **until Metatron’s final reveal that it had all been for Dean after all.**

 **It’s in that scene that Metatron finally gives the Destiel story back to Cas:**  narratively, we weren’t supposed to be openly clued into what was going on even if “with humanity!” was literally begging us to scream “with Dean!” - it was an omission and the story was just waiting to come back around to the reveal which confirmed what everyone yelled at their screen the week before.

If  **Dean has completely disavowed the Destiel narrative**  and is  _months_  out of it in both real time and in-show,  **the whole thing could come crashing down in season 10 because since the end of season 6 he’s been the one consistently telling the story**  and connected to it in just about every episode through subtext. I get the impression from recent fandom lurking a lot of people gave up on Destiel in season 9 because the narrative got so distanced from them - and in particular disconnected from Dean for the first time in 3 seasons. So season 9 ends with Cas saying he just wants to be an angel - he wants to be off the emotional ride he’s stuck on, as the pain of Dean’s death sinks in.  **At this point in the story they could have ditched Destiel entirely.**  It would have been so easy: leave Cas out until he’s relevant to the main plot and focus on the bro stuff exclusively, or set him on another path - perhaps following up on “I just want to be an angel” with him immediately searching for his grace and focussing on Heaven.  **Instead we get… Well. Cas being handed the torch for Destiel, and carrying it single-handedly**. Cas has got used to being a POV character through season 9, but he never got an episode with a Destiel narrative: he shared with Dean in 9x06 and 9x09, while 9x03 and 9x10 were only Destiel storytelling from Dean’s POV, with Cas a passenger to the plot (in the same way Dean was a passenger in 8x17) and his emotions on the matter unimportant. 

 **We get a 3-episode arc exploring from his POV what it means to be human, how that has affected Cas, how the level of grace inside him affects it further, both in the show’s decision to make him that sick and that human.**  While Dean isn’t thinking about Cas, Cas is thinking about Dean constantly as if to make up the deficit: he misses him. That’s how Cas’s story starts: “I miss him.” 10x01 only offers a subtextual Destiel interpretation after that but Cas’s experiences speak volumes about how he feels about his experiences on Earth and particularly towards Dean. In 10x02 and 10x03 he gets his new mission which specifically relates to Dean, and just like that Cas’s side of the story is emotionally driven by Dean again. Hannah questions his priorities and literally everyone including Cas mentions how he’ll probably have to kill Dean. (Spoiler alert: Cas would never kill Dean and this is the prevailing theory on why Mr “I’m not sentimental” Crowley fixed him up after the bizarre moment of one of the weirdest ships on the show going halfway canon out of left field - prevailing theory there to link Dean to a gay ship and do what 9 seasons of bi!Dean subtext failed to drive home by just pointing and screaming instead). Anyway, it’s important that the last thing Cas and Hannah talk about while Cas is running on absolute empty are the dangerous temptations of human emotion - specifically the “love” thing mentioned in 10x01. The implication through these episodes that as Cas’s grace is burning out he’s getting close to human as well as death. We see him sleeping (though not dreaming), naturally emoting and using more natural body language, as well as attempting “human communications” and generally just contrasting massively to the “fresh” angel with him.  **“Human” is repeatedly and clearly equated with feeling through the opening story arc, with both Dean and Cas.** (and even Crowley :P)

There’s a more complicated story being told about Cas’s desires. Hannah says “but those are human things,” when he mentions what’s good on Earth, to which Cas offers a broken, “Yes.” Any sense that he might be objectively appreciating humanity is shaken: there’s a desire there to have it, and yeah I’m taking Metatron weirdly at face value for a few minutes to point out Cas is genuinely very taken with humanity in general, but remember that Cas included “love” on that list, and if Destiel is really a thing, then 9x06 was where we have Cas unequivocally experiencing that part of his check-list of human things thanks to the MO of the monster of the week (and Dean being an outrageously blatant obnoxious ex-boyfriend all episode).

In any case, Cas’s story, Destiel included, is partially there for Hannah to learn from. The “priorities” conversation is so ridiculously important for both of them, and us for understanding where Destiel is at. Cas is now openly relating to people having feelings… And warning them away as a bad thing. It’s screaming Destiel, but not, right now, in a good way.

The story from Cas’s POV also goes on to influence his words to Sam at Dean’s curing: why didn’t he want to be human again? Because that is when emotions are the worst: the best might be there too, but the ability to turn off the pain? Well Cas said, he just wanted to be an angel, at a time when he was most in pain because of Dean. Cas’s arc is there to help Sam understand Dean when no one else could offer a perspective on why Dean would want to not be cured. The phrase “But those are human things” is the counterpart to “who’s the real monster?”, the two extreme ends of themes for the season: embracing the good emotions, human or not, and coming to terms with doing awful things, monster or not. Dean is now struggling with both, as the main POV character who gets all the angst, while Sam is apparently dealing with the monster thing as well from the human perspective, and Cas gets the storyline about his extremely complicated relationship to humanity and one human in particular.  **Once again, Cas’s emotional arc, equated to Dean explicitly several times through 10x01-03, has enormous relevance to the rest of the plot, from Hannah to Crowley to the most relevant bit - Sam and Dean. Once again, a Destiel-based narrative is plot narrative for the direction of the series.**

What I’m curious about now is how  **he and Dean are both back in the same position they were after the middle of season 9, a point when the Destiel narrative dropped right down to the subtext** : Cas has stepped away from the Destiel storyline because of the grace, and Dean still hasn’t stepped back up to it. Sure there was some great subtext to their relationship in their brief conversation in 10x03 with a resurgence of the bed symbolism and just some really nice miserable staring, but  **neither of them were willing to pick up the story** : Cas left, Dean didn’t tell him to stay.  **Dean still has the MoC and he’s not had a single episode where he’s engaged in proper Destiel narrative stuff since then.**

At this point, based off 10x04 I’m wondering if/when Dean will get back into that story, because  **he’s been off it for so long, and it’s specifically linked to the MoC. I almost dare to venture that we won’t get a proper Destiel episode from Dean’s POV again until the MoC is gone** , whenever that is. It hasn’t stopped him feeling for Cas, but it has stopped him pursuing the story in the same way he drove 1000 miles for no solid reason just to see Cas in 9x06.

 **I have zero anticipation for any solid Destiel episodes since this is analogous to mid season 9; and with Cas out of it too what I expect is probably a return to the subtext and Destiel in the hands of others as it was in late season 9.**  

At that last point my 2 week old ramble expires on a weirdly foretelling note: now we know that Destiel is indeed being addressed next episode, in 3-layers deep hands-of-other-people.  **It’s coming not just through the show, as in season 5-6, but it’s being specifically, explicitly put back into the hands of the fans, as in season 4. Literally season 4**. Now way back then that was the show having no knowledge of their ship. At this point it’s being given to us with full knowledge of the ship, and multiple seasons of story lines which one way or another depended on Cas and Dean feeling incredibly intense feelings towards each other, whatever you may assume those feelings were. It can never be the same oblivious denial or tease that it was before 6x20.  **The fans in Fan Fiction are being allowed into the narrative and to become a part of it** , and indicators point towards being told to ship away if that’s what they see. 

I saw/joined in discussion on another post (I am so sorry [obsessionisaperfume](http://tmblr.co/m4s7bC896-ecbcK4ymVe-gA) for tagging you in this but I’ve got to give credit :P) about specifically Robbie Thompson and his meta-Destiel contribution. I already covered Meta Fiction, but as a notable incident of meta-Destiel, he had our most recent references to the Winchester Gospels with Charlie inferring from them that prodding Dean to see how he reacted to Cas being called dreamy was a great idea. It is already therefore canon that you can read the Cas and Dean section of those books and start shipping. And Charlie already knew Dean personally at the point she read them. She inferred not only from the books but her knowledge of Dean. She ships the ship in both a meta and in-show IRL way. Don’t bend your head around that one too much. :P

I don’t really have a good way to round this off except to say that I’m pleasantly surprised past!Me gave me a perfect lead into the discussion of 10x05, and therefore I’m going to trust her about this. I hope at least a couple of people made it this far. 

* * *

~~It’s 2:04 am so this might be not quite right.~~

So, a much briefer summary of the stuff behind the read more until I catch up:

Season 4: Kind of here from the point of view of the fans. Not strictly intentional in the text except a few stray comments/tiny implications, multiplied by actor intensity, the Dean and Cas narrative in whatever other form it took aside from romantic just fitting perfectly with a romantic reading in the thin line between heightened drama/actually writing a love story

Season 5: Kind of an offered point of view of the show, in playing more with ship bait tension and scenarios, making bank off Cas’s popularity. It’s still only a romantic narrative if you choose to see it that way, or when you return later with your shipper goggles on to find the building blocks of their relationship.

Season 6: Clearly lodged in the mind of the show but they are not taking it seriously because there is no intention/expectation of canon in anyone’s head. The teasing gets more barbed because Cas is getting more villainous queercoding before his turn and demise. All previous seasons have framed Dean/Cas interactions from Dean’s POV but 6x20 starts the easily read romantic narrative from Cas’s POV, by allowing us to see it for the first time, and how their relationship looks from his eyes. His reliability as an *emotional* narrator is key to the episode. The storytelling revolves entirely around Cas’s emotions for Dean and Dean’s emotions for Cas.

Season 7: Dean’s POV, but now Destiel Mode in the narrative has been unlocked. Background narrative in his other character development. It’s all on Dean to carry the subplot could-be-romantic storyline. Now that Cas has caused serious emotional damage to Dean his emotional storyline through the whole season is rooted some way or another in what Cas did in season 6. The approach might have been very different if they knew he was coming back and were more interested in teasing that than exploring what it did to Dean to lose him.

Season 8: Destiel narrative is now being treated as a serious joint emotional subplot. It starts in Dean’s POV, as a steady and consistent narrative like with season 7, but knowing Cas is coming back. Separating them out puts the Destiel story on both of them, makes it important that they are restarting from the same place. Naomi is used to delve into Cas’s POV, and he is now afforded a regular POV character chair at the table, which he only sporadically had in past episodes. This gives him a meaningful personal arc. 8x17 is framed as a struggle for him to reclaim his own right to his story. Cas’s POV is more sporadic than Dean’s, and he spends a lot of the season missing. Destiel is more heightened in Cas POV scenes than Dean this season. In 8x23 they share the weight more evenly.

Season 9: The narrative slips from between their fingers to outside agents within the story. It is still mutual and a strong part of the story when they interact or the story is about their relationship. Both of them take on weighty burdens to keep them apart (the Mark, stolen grace) which are paralleled for this season and the next. The Dean and Crowley narrative starts, with 9x10 as the swap over between Cas to Crowley for his attention. The Cas being distracted by Heaven narrative starts, and Metatron is the main agent of that this season. Between them, Crowley and Metatron pry them apart, and Metatron is the agent of delivering the narrative, telling Cas what he’s doing and why, and what his motivations are out loud, as well as his and Crowley’s machinations dovetailing to create demon!Dean, the end of Dean’s emotional POV on Destiel heralded by the Mark. Cas still has POV on it but less episodes, less frequent chances to have it out in the story. The narrative appeared to be muted and in trouble, except for random grand gestures forced by others’ hands.

Season 10: The narrative is pretty much handed to us to hold for a while. Cas carries the Destiel narrative entirely on his own in the first 3 episodes, while Dean is a demon. 10x05, the original reason for this meta, put the burden of seeing Destiel firmly back in the hands of the fans, possibly to tide us over, as Cas has almost no narrative of any sort this season except for helping Claire and Dean, and a dwindling relationship with Heaven as told through Hannah. Now. Here we get back to where I had no clue what was going on. So I’ll go into new paragraphs!

The Colette parallel was set up in season 9 as an implication - in season 10 it creates some of the stronger narrative, although very shakily delivered, possibly the main contribution it had was reassuring us there WAS a continuing Destiel subtext. I feel this is also very meta: it’s something tag teamed by certain writers (Robbie, Berens, & Snymelo being the main culprits if my memory serves) and again in the “here, hold this” is something we have to read into the text, and apply ourselves from the offered framework.

The Dean/Crowley stuff likewise created a love chevron with him in the middle of his shoulder demon and angel, and even without the infamous 10x14 deleted scene where Cas n Crowley snip at each other about being Dean’s boyfriend, the READING is clearly there, especially again in parallels in 10x01-3, but although obvious (“pants?” “I’m sensing awkwardness…”) don’t actually get LINKED. Dean doesn’t mention Cas. Cas won’t admit to Hannah he’s in love with Dean despite dropping planet sized hints about what he wants.

I think Carver’s plot accordion is to blame here - season 10 is the expansion season, entirely, as Amara’s unleashing at least gets us back to a full season of getting to the point, while season 10 was pretty much entirely “oh no the mark” as the big bad, and in the same way season 12 was a lot of “oh no Kelly’s pregnant” for 15 episodes, was really just delaying getting to the thing they really seemed to want - that is, whatever they’ll do with Jack next season. (Hi I’m now getting to work dating this meta circa the end of September 2017)

There’s a whole conspiracy about if the Colette and angel grace theories were going to collide and some sort of love declaration-y cure for the Mark would be on the books. If so it would have been from Cas’s POV to save Dean from being unable to reciprocate, but that’s all deep in the realm of conspiracy and bitterness about dropped plotlines, but at least since WE were handed the narrative to write OURSELVES, I need to mention the 3rd part of the narrative because fuck it, they killed the author dead enough times I think the non-answer is as much a part of the narrative as the ones which do have some more obvious canon backing, because they literally gave us the story to hold and do with what we will.

Season 11: The show thankfully takes the narrative back from us, and continues to do a lot of the telling, vs character showing (which is a distinction that has become important ever since season 9 when the show got meta with it and we have their actions to discern within a framework of the telling).

It’s a shared credit on their POV again - they both have their sides to the angst, and they have their nuances to the story. Dean starts a new love triangle - Amara’s dub-con bond, and his original bond to Cas. Handprint imagery flourishes, turning into hands of God, turning into Chuck’s return. From Dean’s side he’s struggling with this, from early on the pull of Amara is literally dragging him away from going to save Cas. There are several episodes dealing with endgame thoughts and love, and romantic love is discussed directly about and for Dean after the midseason, when, of course, Cas is out of reach to reciprocate, and he’s being pulled away by Amara. When he finds out about Lucifer, he drops everything to spend the remainder of the season mostly contributing worry about Cas.

Cas goes through another round of the old identity crisis from season 9/10, before seemingly being given to the Winchesters to keep from 11x03 onwards. 11x04 gives us a weird moment of Cas POV but only from the phone - while Dean is fighting the werepire and Cas has no idea and keeps rambling, I find it a great metaphor to close my eyes and realise what Cas can hear, and overall it’s an amazing metaphor for his treatment by Dean and how Cas feels towards him in turn, ESPECIALLY as a perspective/POV thing, as it forces us to listen on Cas’s behalf to the fighting and gunshots, but also the silence when he has no idea what Dean is doing so Dean accidentally lets him keep talking into the void, never to be heard. Cas saying “werepire” is metaphorically and almost literally an un-heard love declaration.

As a result of the metaphor of Dean having no idea Cas said werepire, Cas says yes to Lucifer and drops out of agency except 11x14 where he confirms his actions are for Dean now - swapping from more altruistic/want to be useful ones towards defeating Amara. In 11x23 he has little POV but his reactions to Dean’s beer run chat are critical to understanding the scene as more than the surface text, as Dean does all the talking, but in the wrong words. The weight in that scene from the Destiel narrative is on Cas, while on the equally important narrative of Cas as family, Dean is doing the right thing and saying much-needed words.

Season 12: The narrative belongs to both Dean and Cas again in a showing not telling way. Cas has 3 personal episodes where his POV is critical as well as a strong emotional arc through the season, which relies both on other factors AND his relationship with Dean, interwoven. As per many things it comes down to heightened drama between him and Dean personally, privately, and exclusively when we get to the point. Dean spends a lot of the season worrying about Cas or feeling upset, confused and slightly lost; he has a season where he reacts to just about everyone rather than taking the lead, on the back foot in emotional arcs with pretty much everyone. This doesn’t affect whether it’s his POV or not, just that he doesn’t have a particularly dramatic one :P

Cas is dealing with his sense of belonging, primarily, and his POV episodes on past, present, future, deal with belonging and family; he also is struggling with many other things, and 12x09 walks a remarkable line of being somehow entirely about Cas and Mary’s personal meltdowns that will fuel the rest of the season, and also turning Cas’s issues into prime Destiel subtext ripe for the taking, with parallels to Mary’s pining over John. Most of the season relies strongly on anything Cas-related being filtered through an incredible amount of over-attention from Dean to what Cas is up to, from phone calls, to texting, to line of fire snark, to … handing… pink panties… over…, to loudly and personally expressed concern, to sitting in the back seat together in what Dean planned to be the last moments of his life, to a personal falling out, to saving each other, to weird singling out by Ishim, to the “i love you” weird clarification, to minute obvious bits of offered attention, to worrying, to phonecalls, to worrying, to phonecalls, to worrying, to phonecalls, to worrying, to phonecalls and then the real escalation. I mean. That is, Sam, Mary and Dean piling into the house Cas is lurking in and Cas says “Dean.”

No, okay. The POV on the mixtape scene *is* Cas because 12x19 is in Cas’s POV anywhere that he’s in the scene until the last scene when it becomes Sam and Dean’s POV after the last ad break, when we get back into that “and worrying and phonecalls” in 12x20 and Dean of course being the one fixated on Cas and spun out after recent events, and worrying and worrying and - anyway.

Cas goes into Dean’s room to hand back the mix tape, which reveals a depth of character interactions and Dean’s reassurances from the outside. Remember in the werepire scene where you close your eyes and hear only what Cas hears? The Impala being the narrator of that episode giving us an incredible opportunity to step outside the story? You have to remember Cas was *unconscious* in the Team Free Will speech of 5x13, and that that utterly rendered his POV moot on the whole thing. In 12x19 we are with his POV and Dean drops this buzzword and it doesn’t have the significance to Cas. We have to see Dean through Cas’s eyes because we can see Dean through Dean-focussed eyes as desperately reaching out to Cas in his own grumpy way and making a phenomonal effort to break through their communication barrier and try and bring Cas in from the cold. Like the beer run scene, maybe too little too late. Cas not understanding the significance of the mixtape at least as a gift if not the cultural context, also lends to the communication problems and that we are meant to try and sympathise with Cas here and see Dean as obtuse and confusing (though much beloved).

And Dean… Oh no my poor, poor Dean. And I say that from the POV of someone who just watched 12x19 and is currently overflowing with “Oh god poor poor poor poor Cas” feelings. Dean says it all in 12x22: he thought he had it made, with Mary and Cas back, and fate has had it in for them for a while, hasn’t she? So Cas leaves in 12x03 because he feels Dean deserves to be with Mary more (but Dean doesn’t know Cas had that conversation with Mary, just that Cas is leaving, and after they were getting on so well and things were looking so good!) and then he’s working with CROWLEY, that’s right, one’s an angel, one’s a demon, and they solve crimes… No bitterness or jealousy or lingering fear of what Crowley might do to Cas and has done before. Cas is bitter and grumpy and Dean is low key teasing and dresses up as a rock star, but is stumped by Cas’s lack of worth in rushing in to fight Lucifer. He has no clue what Cas did in the time he was in prison, just that he’s glad to see Cas again - and oh, he brought Mary and the BMoL and - oh - oh no, he’s killed Billie he’s monologuing about how important we are and he’s not?? Time to go into a bitter rage about how little Cas cares about himself because I can’t even look at him right now I’m so upset he basically threw  his own life away for my mistake (and never mind the trauma of that prison if he broke in there like he did in Hell and Cas saved him again but not, unfortunately, in such an easy, clean cut way as he once did). And he finally manages to haul himself out and tell Cas he’s not mad he’s worried, but Cas just takes off again on a mission and then Mary’s gone, Cas is gone (Dean himself is temporarily gone and only has Sam’s word that Cas is his best friend to reassure himself with and OH NO the bloody hand print is baaack), and now they’re all acting weird about the BMoL and Cas sounds weird on the phone and then he’s not answering the calls at all, and then he shows up out of the blue with dead ends and bad excuses aaaand mixtape.

And Dean’s POV isn’t really the POV in this scene per say, though he’s the one we see sulking silently at the beginning of the scene, alone, we can see how he feels (he’s not mad, he’s worried). And then his face when he says he’ll get Cas, the sad sad music warning him Cas is gone, the “he came into my room and he played me” admission. Just how TELLING it is that it was his trust in Cas that was betrayed, how disproportionately furious he is because of the deeply intimate way Cas hurt him, and that it was CAS who did it to him at all… And then more worry, this awful dark feeling of losing Cas, of seeing something not-Cas in his face, of feeling he’s been lost all over again. Of having to treat him like the bad guy by searching for him, doing research online to try and track him down. But still, always, over and over and over, giving Cas the benefit of the doubt (I wonder how long that wall-slam scene would have gone if Sam hadn’t interrupted about more important plot stuff happening…) And then finally, really, the season for Dean ends in his perspective, because Cas is dead at his feet, and it’s all in the camera and his slumped shoulders as he kneels beside Cas’s body.

The narrative has backed off entirely from telling us or teasing us or making us guess in complicated games about what Dean and Cas are, but give us a complicated, both sides of the equation, picture of how they FEEL, in the acting and the dialogue they share with each other and others around them; there’s not really a strong meta narrative about anything in Dabb era, there’s just raw, messy storytelling and emotional arcs slapped all over the page, with the weight of 12 years of characterisation (or 8 in Cas’s case) behind it all to shore it all up.

It’s definitely my favourite flavour of this nonsense so far, although when I originally wrote this post I would have thought Metatron’s meta narrative on season 9 would never be beaten.


	2. On How Fairies and Charlie Show Dean is Bi

*raises hand* Hi, I’m Lizzy and I have a problem. I tend to say “challenge accepted” way more than I should.

So the conversation basically started with the [Charlie is God](http://yarnyfan.tumblr.com/post/98314783764/elizabethrobertajones-ficklechild) post, and quickly turned into [yarnyfan](http://tmblr.co/myP8L7uSM-6EBNK9-SqHDOg)talking about [Charlie being a changeling](http://yarnyfan.tumblr.com/post/98318484588/charlie-bradbury-as-god-is-a-kind-of-cracktastic), and immediately I mentally re-wrote my actual dissertation I did at university to be about her, because changelings and LBGT characters was my specific subject so somehow somewhere something pinged. No idea what set that off. Then my thoughts spiralled into Dean because everything is always about Dean.

Pull up a chair…

**Changelings:**

Not the weird round mouthed chompy things from 3x02.

Changelings, in case the average person didn’t spend 3 years of their life hunched over in a library reading obscure books about fairies and monsters like I did and this isn’t general knowledge (I can no longer tell what is or isn’t when it comes to the supernatural for some reason :P), are basically creatures that fairy folk would leave in place of babies that they stole. They’d always be newborn infants, stolen extremely early on in life. A lot of the theory I read was that it was a Medieval explanation for things such as Down syndrome or conditions or defects an infant may be born with. There was a lot of wacky folklore to go along with what defined a changeling, some of it physical, some of it metaphysical, and methods of finding out if your child was a changeling, from kooky things like brewing beer in an eggshell to confuse the changeling to just outright physical abuse. All the lore came down to if you could trick it into revealing itself it would be forced to disappear and you may get your human baby back, or at least you would not be living with an evil creature in your house. It’s understandable why Supernatural did not go down this route with their changelings. Lisa got enough hate without the episode where she beats changeling!Ben with sticks to force it to talk. :P

My essay was basically arguing for changelings to come back around as a trope in literature as a handy metaphor for queer people to relate to (and my creative writing element of the essay was basically just a cheesy romance about a dude and a changeling guy, I basically passed my university degree by writing slash fiction :P) because of their position as Other in society, and the sense of family rejecting them for something they were born as blah blah obvious queer parallels. This was working on the assumption that some changelings slipped by and grew up in our society, raised by humans, but always never quite the same because they had something fae about them. Which is the sort of metaphor I’ll be using, although in this case it’ll be more about Otherness and fairy folk/the fae in general. I’ll use all 3 terms to mean roughly the same thing, but I’ll be saying “changeling” when I mean that specific metaphor, “Other” to refer specifically to the sense of being different, and “fae” as the specific sense of Otherness relating to fairy things.

**The fair folk in Supernatural:**

Obviously the changelings that turned up in-Show were monster-like, and to be assumed come under the Purgatory-going umbrella of Eve’s children, so we’re just going to completely ignore them from now on.

However, the real fae that showed up in season 6 definitely followed the right rules; right down to the trope I came across a lot in my research of them being the early precursors to UFO sightings and the link between descriptions of the fae from historical accounts and more modern descriptions of aliens, which is a brilliant way to introduce the fae in modern American fantasy stuff.  _Clap Your Hands If You Believe_  had pretty much every obvious fairy trope of their interactions with humans that I could have named if you’d asked me to list them blind (seeing as season 6 was live while I was writing my dissertation I have no idea which one I went into biased about first, though I’d been researching it since ~season 5… Definitely wrote it post 6x09 though, despite carefully avoiding mentioning the show in my Serious Academic Work).

Considering how often Supernatural deliberately botches lore (usually to make the monster more murderous), and how they’d already screwed up one piece of fairy lore in the changeling episode, I was pleasantly surprised they played fairies so straight, as it basically insists on introducing a whole new level to the show’s entire universe. It felt both ridiculous and a long time coming: after angels and the like, I was wondering if they’d ever dare to look at the last obvious huge part of human belief. After season 6 they dropped it for ages and I was sort of disappointed they didn’t seem to be going back despite adding it to their lore, until suddenly in season 8 and 9 the mythos is jumped into repeatedly. We get the big missing piece of confirmation I’ve been waiting for since season 6: Supernatural’s mythos is a world divided into Heaven, Hell, Earth, Purgatory, and  _multiple fairy realms_. Be still my heart. Please join me for the prayer circle that if they’re going to insist on dragging this show out indefinitely we eventually get a season with serious focus on the fae because it would  _kick ass_. *clears throat and gets back on topic*

From the confirmation we get of realms existing, I’m going out on a limb and saying changeling lore in Supernatural includes actual fae changelings. I’m not going to go on to argue that anyone in-show is literally a changeling, but it’s nice that they’re presumably out there and if we get more fairy episodes I’d love a real changeling episode for the interesting parallels between certain characters, who I am absolutely seeing as metaphorical changelings.

**Charlie and links to the Fair Folk**

Okay, I admit I’m not writing this chronologically; Charlie didn’t even exist until season 7, and her fae links don’t occur until season 8, but she’s the more obvious way in. Fairy lore  _in Supernatural_  (rather than borrowed by Supernatural) becomes centred around Charlie in the series, part of why I’m so excited for her to come back (seriously placing money on Charlie as Queen of Faery).

So in  _LARP And The Real Girl_ she is accidentally caught up in a plot to usurp her pretend throne via fae magic, but ends up falling in love with the trapped fairy and helps Gilda break free. In this episode Charlie was not particularly coded as down with the fairies herself since it was a moment of discovery for all of us: she was already escaping into a fantasy world that she was queen of, even if it was a construct of our world (but awesome foreshadowing if she does become Queen of Faery  _I’m just saying_ ). The episode mostly serves as our first return to fae magic since season 6, and this time the show is working on coding it into their own mythos, rather than skimming over the surface and picking obvious stories and tropes as they did in season 6, where it never felt particularly integrated.

There is a book of fae magic that the bad guy casually buys off the internet suggesting long before it comes up again at the end of season 9 that there’s more fairy interaction in-world that we realised. The symbol of the tree of pain is literal imagery of fae magic being written into the show’s mythos: it appears on that shadow orc guy’s arm, and he thinks this icon of fairy magic is cool, so he adapts it and turns it into something of his own, making it his new symbol. Good metaphor for the show deciding that it’s about time to make fairy magic an actual part of their system. Not sure where else it crops up, but in  _Meta Fiction_  you have spell ingredients including fairy bones, once again making fae things integral to the magic and mythos of the show (and again a reference of multiple fairy realms in the same breath), so they are quietly building up the picture of the fairy realms being  _important_  in the grander scheme, or else just not forgotten or neglected. Considering the 2 year gap between  _Clap Your Hands_  and  _LARP_ , then for season 9  _Slumber Party_  and this reference in  _Meta Fiction_ , the fairy mythos is definitely picking up steam considering.

So Charlie is our gateway fairy character, assuming Supernatural’s  _unique_  fairy mythos actually begins in season 8. She definitely seems altered by her experience: despite continuing to seek fictional escape between season 7 and 8, it’s only after  _LARP_  that she starts looking for “her quest”, first with hunting between that episode and  _Pac Man Fever_ , and by the time she shows up in  _Slumber Party_  she’s pretty much pining for fairy interaction. She has a displaced sense of not being real-world heroic at the beginning of  _LARP_  but it does not seem to be eating her, especially since she has already found fictional Moondoor fairy land to fill the gap – it’s only after her encounter that this becomes not enough ( _just saying this is not just good foreshadowing for her arc so far but for Faery Queen Charlie hear me out Show it could be glorious_ ).

Fun thought from the fairy scholar: one of the biggest tropes about the fae is how when they touch on your life, you’re touched by them forever, and whether it’s a story of eating their fruit and wasting away for hunger or looking at their queen and wasting away for love or whatever, you  _will_  get dragged back in, and pine away without contact, basically always seeming to have a part of yourself missing until you return. Charlie is shown as having something missing without the fae in her life since  _LARP_ , and in  _Slumber Party_ , once we knew Oz was a fairy realm, I basically knew immediately Charlie was going to be running off there because she was acting just a little fae-touched.

So Charlie’s our main way into any fairy discussion, but there’s a pretty obvious character who’s also been coded with the fae…

**Dean and links to the Fair Folk**

While Charlie’s links to the fae are subtly and gradually brought across,  _Clap Your Hands_ was like being smacked around the head with a brick by all the fairy stuff, and it all hit Dean. Literally, until he managed to explode that fairy in a microwave *laughing forever about my second favourite fight scene after Sam being beaten up by clowns*.

As I said, this episode was more about general fairy lore as you find it in our world: they were not trying to tie anything into their mythos at that point, and even fell back on the UFO thing doubled up with not everyone being able to even  _see_  fairies to explain why they’d never been mentioned in-world before, and why there was the retconned-in-season-8 zero apparent knowledge or overt interaction of fairies in-world. As such I’m not as interested in what it means for the show in general in the same way season 8+9’s lore interests me, but Dean’s interaction with it all is fascinating for the sake of his character and this essay I’m now committed to.

First off, unlike Charlie’s fairy encounters which are all with feminine aspects of the fae, he’s drawn in to a male-dominated fairy world: elder sons, Oberon (who may or may not have existed but was mentioned by name), the male leprechaun which turned out to be the monster of the week, and whatever was going on with that fairy dude in the beanie hat who was stalking him. The only female fairy he saw was the little glowy nipple fairy that he exploded. Even the elves in the shop, which he doesn’t see personally, were male.

Then, following up the male aspect of his fairy encounter, is the elder sons thing – he gets abducted as part of a pattern, with the other victims also being elder sons. His big brother-ness is literally his defining characteristic in any episode, whatever else there is in his personality. Once again he’s given a personal, magical connection to the particular fairy realm involved in the episode.

This encounter also leaves him with the ability for at least this episode to see the fae (possibly just of the realm involved to retcon in later fairy lore from the show but I doubt they’ll think of that). He is marked as someone different as a result of his encounter, and becomes, at least for the length of the episode, linked with the fae, though obviously I’m here to argue it’s a lasting and intrinsic thing. So they pick on him because they think he’s special based on his primary characteristic, and as a result he himself is transformed, in a subtle, perception-based way.

Considering the patchy lore we’re given, there’s not much else here. Jumping ahead to  _LARP_ , and talking about which characters are coded fae and which ones aren’t, I think it’s very important that Sam stays in his FBI suit for the entire episode while Dean is the one who immediately and delightedly plays dress-up with Charlie. Moondoor was a fictional fantasy world, but it was a proxy fairy world; especially with real fairy magic at play there,  _Midsummer Night’s Dream_  style. Adjacent. Oh, you know what I mean. His dressing up and taking part is more than good enough to show that he’s still fae-touched while Sam is deliberately left anachronistic/non-fae in his Muggle clothes. Considering how often Sam’s the one with the mytharc and has literally had inherent magic powers and all that jazz, it’s pretty significant that when it comes to the fae both times it’s Dean who is immediately sucked in and it’s Sam who is left out: even if  _Clap Your Hands_  wasn’t the heartland of awesome Souless!Sam moments, the fae were deliberately picking on elder sons, marking Dean out and leaving Sam clear, so whatever state they walked into that episode, Sam would have been the one remaining non-fae during it.

 _Slumber Party_  was completely a Charlie story, but while Moondoor was multi-gender and both of them took part, I think it’s interesting that the most feminine-coded fae episode deliberately relegates Sam  _and_  Dean to backseat positions: even if Dean is fae-coded, when it comes to the feminine side of fairy things, he’s literally just there to explode nipple-fairies in the microwave, and not allowed to participate properly in the proper female story.

So, that sounds like I’m already bumping into my queer theory here. Better change headings!

**Changeling!Charlie**

Like I said earlier, she’s our gateway fae character, but she’s also the show’s gateway queer character. Whatever arguments you can make for other characters, she’s the obvious symbol on the show that occasionally we can have nice things.

Now, to understand Charlie as a changeling, I think it’s interesting that her sexuality  _isn’t_  the obvious issue – when I first started thinking about it, it was like  _well duh she’s gay and fae and that’s my changeling theory_ , but let’s look at what we know about her personal, internal life: she’s out and proud as both a lesbian and a geek; her two most defining features in her character stereotype are both signs of Otherness (and the geek thing she definitely shares with Dean). Charlie is our most fae character even if she was in a totally mundane show and I was applying this metaphor without the help of overt fairy references tied to the character, but the two things that would mark her as an outsider to the mainstream, and would be great inroads to a changeling metaphor, are both things that she has already embraced. It would seem that being cut out from the family structure at a young age by running away from home and becoming independent at a young age, means however she developed her understanding of her sexuality, it was on her own terms and she has presumably never repressed that aspect of herself in a way that left lasting scars on her interpretation of herself. Her geekdom and connection to fantasy starts  _with_ her family; in a way even if her family never found out about her being gay, the intertwined geek/lesbian thing sort of suggests a stable, supportive environment for both. And if queerness is equated with being fae, then she’s already many steps down the road of being Other in every sense: she is ready to embrace fairy magic and to become a part of that world.

On the other hand, she does have some characteristics that would queer-code her even if she wasn’t openly gay, and even if we stripped away the geek side of her Otherness: the moment where she becomes changeling!Charlie is important. I think it starts because she is on the run from a young age (12, I think  _Pac Man Fever_  establishes) and many LGBTetc youth end up homeless or leaving their birth homes younger than average if they are not accepted. She moves around and uses different names and identities in the places she ends up in order to keep her cover. She’s not who she says she in on the surface, even if her personality is genuine and she is able to find comfortable places for herself where she can be both geek and lesbian, she is  _still_  keeping identity-related secrets. She’s only “outed” properly in  _Pac Man Fever_. Coming into  _Slumber Party_  is the first time we see her with all that stripped away so she’s just the core of her character, at that point ready to create a new identity by heading into a fairy world. No wonder she doesn’t seem sure of what is meant for her in this world any more at the start of that episode.

Side note as a scholar of fairy stuff: the name-changing is kind of a big deal with fae: look just at the story of Rumplestiltskin for the power of a real name. There’s a lot of precedence for it, so Charlie not using her real name is one more thing that makes her adapted well to a fae storyline, should the issue ever come up.

So to code her as a changeling is more to show someone who has long accepted their Otherness, and while she is defined by the Otherness, she is a positive representation of what that means with her idealised comfort in herself, and her outsider status is coded into her by other means, so that she can still  _have_  the changeling coding, without compromising her relatively happy place in terms of generally being a fae character. She is different, not of this world, and then when she comes to terms with that in our world, given a chance to shed changeling!Charlie, she instead goes to a completely different world, to start again with being connected yet Other.

Who’s going to be more difficult to manage, do you think?

**Changeling!Dean**

Okay, this is complicated mostly because there’s too much to say on him what with 9 seasons worth of character development largely slanted towards destroying his outwards façade, but I’ll try and be brief.

The sense of Otherness with Dean comes from the conflict of his outer and inner personalities: season 8 in particular was marvellous for showing us Dean’s softer edges, and probably not coincidentally  _LARP_  is one of the best episodes for that and Charlie is an amazing wedge for getting through the cracks in Dean.

But from the start, Dean’s shown his sensitive side towards kids, dropped geeky references left right and centre, and blown us all away with the emotional range he shows when not in conflict and trying to be tough.

He’s also been queer-coded for an extremely long time, probably starting with direct subtext from 2x11 rather than tiny implied moments or shared Wincest jokes, with the “why do they think we’re gay anyway” reaction. And then from that point on basically the rest of the show is one big story about why he’s bi and we’re so not going into that essay that so many other people have written, so let’s just work on the assumption that at least the subtext says he is, whatever level of explicit confirmation of the fact you think the show’s given us.

Basically with Dean his character development personality-wise (rather than emotionally, which is driven by his relationships with the other characters) always comes down to presenting one thing and then doing or saying something which surprises the viewer. It can be the second episode ever where he crouches down to talk to the mute kid about his own sense of loss when he was young, it can be his confess-only-to-himself secret about the pink satin panties in  _The End_ , it can be my casual-viewer friend’s absolute conviction that he was going to give Sam food poisoning with those delicious burgers he made in  _Trial and Error_.

Dean’s character was set up and is consistently enforced by his job and emotionally-repressed sense of what he should present as, only for it to be torn down. Queer-coding is not necessarily about saying outright that someone is literally queer: when you’re looking for it in media and literature, it’s about a character being established as one very set, obvious thing, and then that being subverted and turned around to show the viewer that their expectations were not met but what resulted was much better; it’s a theory which just came about because one of the most obvious things to hide in the subtext throughout history has always been a character or real person’s sexuality and so there’s a much greater language and skillset for decoding that than anything else. And very often a character queer-coded one way is subtly implying there’s a an issue of sexuality at play as well, with the other aspect of them only a metaphor standing between the reader and identifying the character as literally queer.

The fact is that the show starts us off with a guy who is macho and desperately heterosexual (and can’t stop telling us that), and they use him as the character to strip down repeatedly for every other aspect of his presented personality, so even if they  _didn’t_  throw something in at every chance to make Dean look less straight than he wants to be, Dean’s characterisation in other aspects would be leading us to question whether the façade of straight and ridiculously manly was meant to hold up as well as all the other lesser perceptions that someone might have had. As the emotional core of the show, the only way to go, however his character was initially presented, whatever personality he first walked onto the screen as, was to become something other than what he started as. With good character development a main character will always start to have a different interpretation to the audience than the one they’re consistently trying to enforce, meaning the moment Dean began protesting too much about his heterosexuality there was literally nowhere else to go but understanding that this was going to turn into a character that everyone and their mum has a queer reading for. Guess who (and their mum) does?

Anyways, with Dean a large amount of his personality goes right back to his childhood; we can say he got swapped for changeling!Dean the night Mary died. He has grown up being forced into the roles he thinks will earn him approval and literally keep him alive as well as more metaphorically afloat and coping in the world. His sense of Other comes from absolutely anything which is not one of his obviously presented stereotyped character traits as the macho hunter dude.

Without going near his perception of his sexuality or gender roles, we get the glorious example of  _Bad Boys_  showing us a unique side of Dean which emerges only away from his family while he is still young enough that feeling like a changeling would absolutely matter to him. It shows us a time when he was emotionally healthy and happy in a totally different way than expected, so there’s the Other in this example: his brief sense of rightness at being there. Once he was back with Sam and John, those memories became things he could not allow himself to have as he had intentionally given something of himself up to return to them and it hurt to leave it behind, and so that side of him was covered over to the point where it is surprising to both the viewer and Sam discovering Dean’s history, because he’s made it an Other part of himself. Once again, like Charlie, being actually queer or not, he’s got all the coding to be an alien in his own world - whichever world that is; after all, things with Lisa broke down in reverse when he was too much in hunting to keep the normal life. It reinforces his sense of being a changeling wherever he goes – of not being quite right or like the person he knows he is supposed to be.

To bring this back around to Dean and the fae, I’m pretty sure I implied all this in his section anyway, but basically his interactions with them highlight how his sense of normal self – the repressed changeling self – comes out around the fae. In this case it’s expressed by dressing up in the LARP episode and being comfortable around his fellow changeling in any episode she’s in: I’m sure he and Charlie really clicked for the first time in her introduction episode as he guides her over the phone, not just with the fake flirting with the security guard that makes them jointly queer together, but subtle things like their conversation about her tattoo; the shared geekiness, which is another thing which makes them Other.

When it comes to Dean’s personal fae encounters, as I was explaining through Charlie, he’s given a very male-oriented fae encounter, which through uncomfortable male rape jokes also ensures there’s an element of sexuality there, however presenting it as unpleasant and intrusive. The line, “Did you service Oberon, king of the fairies” on the other hand does suggest at least some give on Dean’s side rather than it all being take, as it’s an active verb applied to Dean, not a suggestion that something was done to him. Word choice is important, guys.

What I mostly take away from that episode in terms of Dean and understanding his changeling nature is that he is being presented as very uncomfortable with his sexuality, something we obviously knew already, and wasn’t worth much just from  _Clap Your Hands_  but it bears repeating in the bigger, better context we get later. The metaphor becomes more obvious when you compare it to Charlie meeting the fae, where she immediately (literally) embraces them and the offered same-sex experience, as she has already learned to embrace herself and what it means to her to be Other. Dean is dragged into it and it’s left completely ambiguous about what happened to him, in the same way that his sexuality is left ambiguous, especially in earlier seasons.

By season 8, when he is coming around to be more comfortable with himself (and this is 2 or so episodes away from  _Everyone Hates Hitler_  and the incredible bar scene), he is also shown comfortable with the fae. His past experiences aren’t mentioned: for all intents and purposes you could go into that episode thinking it was the first time they’d ever encountered the fae and only didn’t go through the “it’s real!?!??!” side of things because of hearsay and general world-weariness about too many things being things by that point.

In any case, he goes ambiguously fae himself, dressing up and engaging in the world in a way Sam does not, so it is a step towards acceptance and understanding himself as Other in the same way that Charlie does.  _LARP_ does show Dean immediately having a sense of kinship and belonging at Charlie’s fae court where he’s given the misgendered “handmaiden” role (what I like about that is that he carries on being exactly the same badass and no one expects him to do anything girly, they just… call him handmaiden and he rolls with it): he is playing around with a foam sword and getting into her battle plans even before he dresses up, and he’s shown to be excited about taking that step. It’s just another sign from a season which moved Dean huge steps forward that he was for however briefly becoming comfortable with some of the things which have made him a changeling character.

* * *

Since this randomly popped back up into my awareness I began thinking about fairies again because of the neat timing. 

Somewhere deep in this ramble I talk about fairies using true names, and at another point, saying Charlie had been completely outed from her assumed identities, I’d like to posit that I clearly don’t actually have a working brain since we didn’t know her real name at that point and I should have known we didn’t know her real name because I literally re-watched all of Pac Man Fever to write the original meta  _with the aim of learning everything about Charlie so I could accurately talk about her_.

Given the end of There’s No Place Like Home, after the episode repeatedly used Charlie’s actual real name, and showed it to have massive amounts of power (like when she confronted Wellington and used it in her emotional defeat of him or as part of the emotional putting-back-together before the literal putting-back-together of her halves),  _that_  episode fits that theme a lot better than anything I was trying to say about this theme back when I wrote this.

Given that, the way she uses Dean’s name to validate him at the end sort of ties in better: names have power and having found and used her real name for the first time in ever, from a fairy point of view it’s not weird at all she’d have resorted to reminding him of that.

I mean I’m probably stretching out the remit of the fairy meta here, but it does lead into 10x12 which had a lot of fantastic characterisation for Dean re: [bisexuality as cake ](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Dean-vs-Cake)metaphors and in general being more comfortable with himself by embracing [liking Taylor Swift](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Swiftie!Dean). (I just linked my tags because it’s turned 2am and I suck, but there’s good meta from other people in there… This is just for the archives I guess :P) Considering Charlie was there actually embracing her true self with an emphasis on her real name and then named Dean and then a few thing happened the very next episode which make vague subtext gestures towards that for him… *clings to my tenuous connection*

Also just to finish tidying things up from newer canon since I wrote this, I collected fairy references up from across the seasons somewhere in there (not many :P) but the last run of 3 episodes all had fairy stuff - Rowena’s spell in 10x10, obvs Charlie’s return, and then in 10x12 the guy who thought the MotW was a UFO led them to suggest fairies again presumably in remembrance of Clap Your Hands. (Also yay return of season 6-style uncomfortably rapey jokes, with a job at Sam’s time in the Cage on top of alien probing jokes. Wow.)


	3. The Bunker’s Tables And Their Relationship Dynamics

>  

>  no-more-myself-only-you

> I can’t help but think about how Dean was in the kitchen in 12x02, like it was his safe place. And then I remember that Castiel’s safe place ,while he was trapped in his own body and mind while possessed by Lucifer, was again the kitchen. I don’t know if the two events connect somehow, but if they are, damn I want to know the meaning of it.

* * *

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/152353976198/no-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think)

Okay so I was gonna make this as my own post anyway today (this has honestly been on my to-do list) - SLIGHT tangent in my point from this post because I go via everything but what the hey having this post to answer makes a much better intro to me tackling my entire “[look at this fucking table](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/look-at-this-effin-table)” tag into shape, and I was always going to include the DeanCas side of things so… I just found this post asking for answers although I don’t think OP was prepared for some nerd who’s been keeping notes on this since season 10 to find the thing :P

(Full credit to [@justanotheridijiton](https://tmblr.co/msbbZom6stVUaSwCo2j0eeQ) who spent yesterday making a few comparative picture posts for me - [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/152296536658/justanotheridijiton-11x21-12x02) [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/152298114818/justanotheridijiton-2x22-9x02-12x02) and [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/152312771058/justanotheridijiton-9x14-10x18-11x18))

The short answer: basically this gifset but flipped around with angsty Dean on the floor in the place of angsty Cas with his TV

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/142423421558/sometimes-i-just-hurt-myself>

  

with them obviously meeting in the middle over this common ground of a shared safe space to make it DeanCas. (TBH: to do list - update the gifset with the flipside underneath - may go quickly make those 2 gifs and stick the revised version in my queue :P)

Why is it DeanCas specifically? 

There’s ALSO the family theme going on here, and in 12x02 there’s a very important difference made about the family meals: 

  


The Winchesters are eating in the war room on the map table, the Bunker Family ate in the kitchen at the big 8-person dining table.

The other point being how we have no wide shot of the Bunker Family because there *isn’t* one. 10x18 of course emphasised the found family theme with the Bunker Family etc. But there was more going on in that scene than the surface tells us. Sam, Dean and Cas are ostracised from each other by the camera to the point where I ended up having to make a diagram for the purpose of figuring it out and I think if not for Dean’s hands in the Cas n Charlie shot (e.g. [this gifset](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/116632128083/deansmanlyfeels-elizabethrobertajones)) you could have assumed these moments took place at completely separate times…

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/116635617488/how-are-cas-charlie-dean-and-sam-sitting-in-the>

In any case, in the context of 10x18 Sam was already isolated from the Bunker Family by a decision that was going to shatter them - the last supper pizza party blends into Sam meeting with Rowena to ask her if she can use the Book of the Damned to save Dean, after lying to everyone about destroying the book. It wasn’t a positive memory for him in the same way because he was distracted and split off from the group, and I’ve become extremely fond of the direction on the scene (despite lingering annoyance you can’t gif a nice simple wide shot of the Bunker Family)

Dean is a touch more included in things, if only because we see him looking over and laughing and engaging with Cas and Charlie, and he seems happy: there’s room to assume this is a good memory for him without it being too complicated. Now Charlie’s dead (*obligatory scowling in the direction of Singer/Buckleming*) Cas and Dean share a good memory that Sam was somewhat isolated from/in his mind will be far more tainted by the thoughts of the choice he made that day, leaving it just between Dean and Cas as a good memory of a time when they were HAPPY.

Furthermore, after the 10x18 table nonsense I started keeping an eye out for the table and how it was used elsewhere in the show and began slowly pulling together examples of the way the show uses the rooms for certain threads of the story.

Dean is closely tied to the kitchen in the Bunker before we even see it, by him cooking in 8x14, and our first sight of the kitchen is here in 9x04 where Dean was upset because he’d cleaned the kitchen right before the wicked witch trashed it:

which is already ominous about the kitchen metaphorically applying to Dean in the same way we get invested in the state of the Impala representing him. 

The first time we see the kitchen in use just as a place to hang out, I think, is in 9x13, where the sides of the table are already chosen and the table is being used to show their conflict, with Dean standing up as soon as Sam sits down:

Then of course the end of the episode features one of the more painful rounds of their season 9 argument, again with the table used as a prop between them:

  
  
  


([home of the nutty for screencaps](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D194%26page%3D18&t=NTgzMDYwYzljMDE4MDgwZTViNDZmYjMwMWU5NDQ2ODMxMjMxZjI3NCxkV3FNOWFpZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152353976198%2Fno-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think&m=1))

After which the kitchen is tarred with a place in their issues for a long time and I haven’t finished my rewatch through the important parts in this arc (I need to cover 9x16 > at least 10x18 to be sure I’ve got everything :P) but there’s so much strife over this table and it’s all brothers stuff but if you look at Sam isolated in 10x18 in that  - whether it’s Kevin (Bunker Family 1.0) next episode having his “place” at the table/apparently being tied most to the kitchen despite living in the library while he was alive:

  


And a moment of incredible loneliness and despair for Sam takes place with him in that same seat later in [10x01](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D209%26pid%3D254791%23top_display_media&t=NDc5YWVmMTJkZDJmMWMxYTFmYWRmNmE4NmVkYjQ5NGY1YzgxODRlOCxkV3FNOWFpZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152353976198%2Fno-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think&m=1):

And again in [10x14](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D222%26page%3D19&t=NGJjNTVkNTAxMmZkMmMxM2EzOWE2ZTExOWEwYmRhZGRjNGE4MDNmNSxkV3FNOWFpZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152353976198%2Fno-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think&m=1) when we ended the episode on a long sad pan into Sam’s face:

  


They slot into these places a fair few times in start/end of episode conversations, but one that struck me the most in season 11 for their dynamic was [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/134464422498/winterchesters-dean-using-his-dad-voice):

Sam drifts to stand by that side of the table, and the moment in this scene is very much showing a poor relationship balance jut for Dean ordering Sam like that and Sam sloping out with his shoulders down. Sully’s whole surprise comes across badly for Sam, and he’s not exactly nostalgic and ready to eat Sully’s cooking (paralleled to Dean’s via the marshmallow mac n cheese mentioned in season 10, so fitting into a wider picture of Sam not quiiite being there with Dean’s domesticity and attachment to the kitchen, that tracks right back his surprise Dean can cook in 8x14)

And then of course when it comes to huge brother arguments, nothing quite tops “Sam hit a dog” since that’s what destroyed Sam in season 8 and set off everything else, and again that resolves with them at their expected sides of the table:

Which although that wasn’t the ORIGINAL argument from 9x13 was a sort of ~[original sin](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/138216230783/tbh-the-you-should-have-looked-for-dean-in)~ of Carver era that seemed squared off finally, in the sense that they finally talked about it properly using their words, and had a considerably better relationship for the rest of the season…

But not enough I think Sam has any serious positive association to the kitchen (and there’s more I could say on the codependency side of things but this is theoretically a Destiel-related post so all I have to do here is thoroughly explain why I think Sam has nothing to do with the kitchen in this way of a serious emotional connection. I’d argue if any common room in the Bunker is “his” it’s the library. He’s comfortable there more than his own room I think… And in his moment in [9x10](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D191%26pid%3D232344%23top_display_media&t=ZDlhNGFlMjNmMjM1NDgwMGI3ZmY2MmRmNTY4NTdmZDY4NGMzOGVjNixkV3FNOWFpZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152353976198%2Fno-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think&m=1) we had paralleled to Cas in 11x18, the library was used:

Anyway. This gets us back to season 12 and Tangent No. 2 on the Winchester Family Dinner:

So far 10x18 is the only seriously Family-outside-of-Sam-and-Dean moment to take place at the kitchen table in the inner sanctum. Even several meals have been shown in the library (e.g. 8x14, or Dean with his cheese toastie in 10x09 or omelettes he made in 10x11) and I would argue the library is vaguely a sort of work/life balance place, although it’s such a main room it’s hard to say EVERY interaction there is significant (and the kitchen has its moments which don’t fit the pattern as it gets more use over time).

Meanwhile the map room or war room I would say is an extreme end like the kitchen is to domesticity, it is to hunting and being consumed/trapped by the job because of the incredible cage-like imagery it provides at times, for example Sam in [8x21](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D178%26page%3D2&t=YWEwMzI3OTA4ZmYxODRlYTAzOWQwNzE4NjQzOTNmNTUzZDk0YWU4NyxkV3FNOWFpZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152353976198%2Fno-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think&m=1):

or Dean in 11x21:

The end of season 11 featured many scenes around the war room table in 11x21, 22 and 23 with the full ensemble and then some. Possibly the best moment was this:

which summed up their whole terrible sibling dynamic in one well-placed kick.

In any case, the Mary dynamic in the family is still fractious and fragile, and eating there keeps her at arm’s length from the sanctum and underlines the potential for the smaller scale but still perhaps most important conflict of the season not coming from any big bad but from between the flesh and blood Winchesters learning to deal with this huge change in their lives - as the war room table usually seems to show in important set pieces what the conflict is in the most simple terms.

Dean retreats to his sanctum after the meal to remember the memory of Mary. She’s specifically not allowed into that space yet - certainly not as an actual living breathing character, and it confirms yet again this is Dean’s safe space in the bunker too, and we already have Cas there, from 11x18.

So to recap: Sam lives in the Bunker with them, but the kitchen is not his safe space at all, rather it’s been a hostile environment more times than not, and he’s actively excluded from the one good memory that Cas in particular would have of it. Mary hasn’t even been formally allowed in the kitchen for a nice set pieces about family, and the lines are still very much being drawn there. Dean is just attached to the kitchen anyway, so even back in 11x18 the very fact Cas was there without knowing it was ALSO Dean’s safe place in this same way linked it to Destiel not just the Bunker Family feels from 10x18 (although those were plenty) because it’s “Dean’s” room in the same way the library is “Sam’s” room. Now we have doubled down on that with seeing Dean using the room in the same way Cas did, as a retreat/sanctum/somewhere with better reception :P

It could just be a last surviving Bunker Family thing since Charlie and Kevin had their attachment to the place, and certainly emphasises really hard that Cas is family to Dean in this powerful “Family don’t end in blood” way, that with Mary NOT at the table yet reminds us of the “but it doesn’t start there either” amendment as she hasn’t been let in yet. 

Despite this post being MOSTLY Sam and Dean rambling I’d argue looking at this all from Cas’s perspective makes it way more Destiel, but from Dean’s in the very wider picture, the story is still keeping even his blood relatives out of the kitchen, emotionally, in a way that Cas is let in. They have another tick in their endless “more profound bond” column just because this is something small and personal and emotional and  _private_  even from each other that they nevertheless share. In the same way we’ve seen them bond over other parts of their stories that overlap with almost perfect neatness. It’s one of those things that at the very least you have to credit as them as ~kindred spirits~ being shown walking the same emotional paths, but of course always works so well for suggesting their romantic compatibility because it gives them a near-mystical emotional connection/compatibility.

And it’s over something domestic and about the core of the family/self; it’s about the homes they make and the families they choose, and so again it’s just…suggestively romantic that it’s about such deep and personal things. It gives the sense of home, especially that Cas would find that home where Dean is, and to loop all the way back around to the “[Dean vs pie](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Dean-vs-cake)” discussion of the last few days, especially about Dean as a cook, Mary NOT as a cook, and the “apple pie life” aspiration being subverted for Dean through the years (including importantly in his romantic expectations and how he might like cake after all), and that getting his pie is not what Dean truly craved after all etc, it shows more than anything that Dean is the MOST domestic character if all everyone’s been talking about is how he became the character most likely to cook and nest and fuss over his kitchen and so on and so on - it’s HIS thing and not anyone else’s…

…Except Cas’s apparently.


	4. Destiel Relationship Overview - Dean’s Side

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> So... This is not hating, or trying to bring down any positivity. I really like your blog and your meta, otherwise I wouldn't lurk around like a creeper Misha :) But why is everyone happy about Cas being all about Dean when the sentiment isn't returned? When Dean hasn't even begun to fix all the shit he has put Cas through? He shouldn't be happy next week, he shouldn't flirt with some wrestler. Castiel deserves more.

* * *

I can’t speak for anyone else but myself here, but personally it’s just by taking a really long view. It’s obvious Dean loves Cas when you watch the show as a whole, and it’s obvious he’s cared about him from much earlier on than he’d even admit, and then building into love over many years. Like,  _nothing_  has happened as far as I’m concerned that could have wiped out the feeling expressed in the Crypt Scene or the times love was obvious without being expressed through the seasons. It would take an actual plot focussed on unravelling how much Dean cares about Cas to remove my certainty that in the background he does still love Cas very deeply. You know, like, 6x20 over again but the aftermath being more final rather than Dean just beautifully struggling with his love vs the betrayal… Something that will actually convince me that the story wants us to know for absolutely sure that Dean is done with Cas.

As it is the way the feeling has been written is that at the start of season 9 it was still being made obvious that Dean had feelings for Cas (9x03, whatever you say about how it treated Cas, made Dean’s side painfully obvious; 9x06 and all that obvious on-screen pining and unresolved feelings there in front of us for the  _both_ of them; 9x09 and how weird and flirty they were in the bar together, and how Dean opened up and told Cas everything despite 9 episodes of Gadreel telling him not to and to leave Cas out; 9x10 using Cas entirely as an emotional prop for Dean (in a good way respectful of Cas’s personhood :P)…) and then at the end of 9x10 there’s a very specific walking off moment which we’re still not really over, but only at the start of this season were there gifsets like “this is the last time Cas saw Dean fully himself and this is the first time he sees him without the Mark” etc.

The thing about that walking off moment was that it wasn’t anything to do with Dean n Cas, but Dean and Sam and specifically just Dean’s issues with himself and how he deals with Sam, and he headed off into territory of deep self-loathing that fuelled the whole Mark of Cain arc. Cas is sidelined from Dean’s emotional arc, but not because of anything that happened between them, and then we were unfortunate enough that this was the arc that got dragged out for multiple season renewals rather than tidying it away and starting something new. The general consensus is that they just meant to hurdle this storyline and get back to something else (since all the threads about Metatron and the tablets and whatever they meant to do with Crowley were left hanging, and still haven’t amounted to anything, rather just fizzling out in the background but by bit as time crawls on), but the nature of this arc dealing with Dean’s internal alienation and descent meant they were dragging out all the related issues. It’s taken a disproportionately long time to deal with Sam and Dean’s issues and those aren’t all still resolved either: there’s been stuff on the table between  _them_  since season 8 and 9 as well that has never been addressed as the plot rolls on and on. Like, there is always bro drama each season, but rather than refreshing it with a new reason to be angry with each other for a mid season flare up, they’ve been stewing on some stuff so long that they only cleared up the “you should have looked for me in Purgatory” thing in 11x11, and that had been a raw wound since 8x01. 

In that sort of atmosphere where the main drama between the brothers is getting the same drawn out festering treatment, I can’t even be mad about Dean and Cas’s relationship development dragging out the same way, especially when it can all be identified as having similar root causes in the writing choices the writers make re: the great and terrible Plot Accordion? I think it is rubbish that this has all been hanging on the previously yearly turn around of who did or didn’t care (so they think :P) with Dean showing less care to Cas… 

If it had been Cas showing less care to Dean and getting trapped in 3 seasons of an arc that kept him emotionally alienated from Dean, rather than being our main conduit of Destiel emotions for 3 years, and Dean more blatantly pining after him, I wonder what the discourse would be like. I feel like in those scenarios (such as season 4, 6 or 8) Cas’s care for Dean is still obvious anyway but Dean just can’t see it because plot contrivances/Cas being grumpy as fuck around him despite probably fucking the universe up on Dean’s unwitting behalf. So Dean gets to feel hurt by Cas’s lack of interest but we still get to see it there. While something like season 7 or 9 Dean’s lack of care for Cas takes more rationalising that he does still care with analysis of how he’s acting, because the plot calls for him to ignore Cas or be angry with him and you have to burrow down to all his layers of repression to work out his motivations.

Like, it’s obvious Dean cares about Cas in season 7 and he doesn’t just magically like him again in the last 10 minutes of the season after and only because of one conversation (and maybe the sandwich Cas made), but if you take it surface level and pretend Dean wasn’t struggling with these feelings, he pretty much seems to hate Cas for the entire season, and if you can only pick one emotion for him to feel at a time and go with what he’s saying with his words you quickly fall into a trap of misreading him.

SO I do think that Dean cares about Cas just as much, but has a worse time expressing it, and the story’s been against him showing it very well except for very small fleeting moments like the blanket thing etc. I’m holding back judgement on if there’s a big conspiracy to crush the gayness out of it, just because stuff DOES still get through, and some people might say that’s just enough to keep everyone hanging on, but it doesn’t actually seem to be in practice so I don’t know what to make of it. :P I’m more willing to believe in unintentional but hurtful incompetence than actual malicious conspiracy, that’s for sure. (This is literally how I started the No Homo Intern conspiracy but shh I was the one saying there WASN’T one in counter of Fireintheimpala saying “but what if there WAS” :P) And I do still think they’re writing in Destiel moments where they can even if there isn’t consistency or, at the moment, some clear direction for it all. To me it is a waiting game to see what happens to this plot thread that’s been left to the side along with other things like Metatron’s existence or the tablet or whatever. Things can get shelved on this show for an unbelievably long time only to pop up again when you least expect it.

Anyway, to skip over the present moment for a minute to talk about the wrestling episode, that’s why nothing short term can get me down, because I am still feeling somewhat patient with the show, and aware that watching it week by week and then dissecting the episodes like ravenous piranhas when they air[ is literally the  _worst_  way to watch television](http://peter-pantomime.tumblr.com/post/133103136051/theres-a-book-i-keep-meaning-to-read-called-the). I sometimes regret falling down the fandom hole, all the fun and friends and community aside, because when you watch in total isolation you can choose not to watch for, like,  _months_  if you feel like it and then catch up a whole run of episodes and it’s almost certain that the bad episodes will blur and the good episodes will stand out and all the plot threads woven through a season will show up and make sense far faster than when you’re guessing and often coming up with false speculation. Season 7 is legitimately one of my favourite seasons after the apocalypse arc because I suspect* I watched enough of it in one go, completely oblivious of if Cas was meant to be permanently dead or not, that I just enjoyed it for what it was, and for casual entertainment that season actually is very solid, with in my opinion only a very few bad MotW dragging it down. 

*I barely remember the year it aired and have a secondary suspicion I only remember season 7 in the context of marathons re-watching later when season 8 and 9 aired, but either way my point stands :P

Especially considering “[Mood Whiplash](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Ftvtropes.org%2Fpmwiki%2Fpmwiki.php%2FMain%2FMoodWhiplash&t=MDU1MzlkYjFlMDNlMjllZGJhNGNiMDI2ZTVjMjI0MWJlMDExYzlhMCx1bGlmQUlSag%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F139723138058%2Fso-this-is-not-hating-or-trying-to-bring-down&m=1)” is a well-known trope, and the show makes a lot of use of it ([go to the subpage and search for Supernatural](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Ftvtropes.org%2Fpmwiki%2Fpmwiki.php%2FMoodWhiplash%2FLiveActionTV&t=ODA2ZTkyMzkxZmJkZjJjODY2ZDI5MmM1MTkzN2U5ZWE1ODhmN2U2NSx1bGlmQUlSag%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F139723138058%2Fso-this-is-not-hating-or-trying-to-bring-down&m=1) :P) I would expect heavy and light episodes to happen around each other. Episodes with a silly concept often lighten the blow before or try to recover the tone after a dark episode, and 11x14 was one of our bleaker episodes for a long time because of the futility that was thematic across the board, from Lucifer admitting he probably wasn’t strong enough to kill Amara and suggesting Cas’s sacrifice had been in vain to the main submarine arc ending in death, to the weapon they recovered being useless. Have that along with the personal blow to Dean from finding out about Cas, and the whole episode is one big dark cloud that even some funny moments with Casifer couldn’t really lighten up (we should have known it would be dark after getting to see Lucifer drenched :P).

Anyway, the show’s got a long history of throwing in wacky or pointless fluff episodes around the heavy stuff, so to me this seems quite expected at least in concept, so it’s nothing more than an eyeroll and “of course” when I see the episode order, even if I didn’t have some certainty that next episode probably will cover Dean’s sadness about Cas some more (assuming that the voice over from the Keep Grinding promo is still yet to come as we just haven’t heard it yet) and that again is stopping me from feeling like the choice of episode following on isn’t THAT terrible and that until we actually see how Dean is written in the whole of it, we can’t judge him because we don’t know all the context, and in the long run, who knows what it will focus on but it’s only a smaller part of the bigger picture.

I know you didn’t come to me complaining about the end of 11x14 specifically although you do sound unconvinced by it in general I’d guess fro your tone, but I’ve seen people are still upset with it here and there at least as of my dash ~5pm yesterday which is as up to date as I am with fandom right now :P I was thinking I’d make a post like this just for the people who couldn’t rewatch anyway but now since this post is already exceedingly long I’m tacking it on the end but it does contribute to why I feel so positive so I guess it counts as answering the question still. 

I think ESPECIALLY after rewatching on Friday but also it was my instinctive first reading, that the ending is all about Cas and that Dean’s reaction is both emotionally powerful and enough to show that he cares, and honestly my first response on hearing people thought it wasn’t is still confusing me. 

Hopping in at a random point, aka the last ad break, before that we just get Dean’s confused horror turning to look at Cas after Sam says “that’s not Cas!” but we don’t get a real reaction until after the fade back in. Here’s his face in the fraction of a second before Lucifer chucks him across the room (there’s like 2 blurry frames of this in the episode because Misha’s head then blocks Jensen’s face): 

which I like just because it’s blink and you miss it more concern and fear and is the only moment we get of Dean *immediately* processing Cas not acting like Cas after Lucifer breaks character in front of him for the first time (after one last “wrong shoulder” moment).

The next shot of Dean is understandably checking on Sam because he’s been down and out on the floor the entire time Dean’s been back so is blatantly already suffering from being in the same room as Lucifer unattended for however long, and I’d expect nothing less of Dean to check on him, but as Lucifer talks about donning his “Cas mask” Dean finally looks at him again:

It’s specifically talking about playing Cas that draws Dean’s attention back to Lucifer, where I think he had been kind of not paying any attention to the generic villain monologue while checking on Sam because Lucifer was just spouting words as he does. His eyes actually flick back to Lucifer  _as_  he says “Cas”. And from there you see (in my shoddy just for making a point gif) from there his expression goes from concerned - directed at Sam - to somehow falling even more, I think showing his own internal pain because it’s dropping an exaggerated expression designed for communicating to another person (aka a silent “are you ok?”) to Sam, to just showing what’s on Dean’s mind.

We get some shots of Sam cutting his palm, and Dean goes into mission mode, knowing he has to keep Lucifer’s attention on him because Sam’s got the banishing covered, essentially silently communicating together that Dean, who is still much better off than Sam, needs to take the brunt of what comes next while Sam works on banishing, so the next few shots are about this, with Dean getting to his feet, looking determined, and Lucifer is monologuing about how how obnoxious Winchesters are again rather than making it about Cas. Any time he’s blah-ing on about himself, basically the attention is not really meant to be on him.

The next time we get anything about Dean’s feelings rather than anger/being the distraction is when Lucifer opens the wrappings on the Hand of God, and here we have an ambiguous moment that’s been discussed a lot where his anger drops away and he looks scared, and you can read it either as him being terrified that Lucifer will use the weapon on them and leave, unstoppable and out to get the rest of the world. Or you can assume he’s still thinking about how it seemingly utterly destroyed Delphine, and he’s scared that it will destroy Cas along with Lucifer if he tries using it (forgetting for a moment that Delphine specified mortals were more likely to be killed by it). Either way this “no!” is the first, but not the last, time we hear his voice break in this final section.

I’m actually inclined to think it was general concern for maybe TFW in general (considering the mutual obliteration Dean just witnessed literally a minute before) or just him and Sam because when the Hand doesn’t work, he glances around at Sam again as well, I suppose checking they’re all still unexploded, but I think it’s a valid reading that he could also have been scared at the very least for the fact it might have, say, burned away Lucifer’s current vessel in the process, seeing as he saw Delphine burn from the inside out to use it.

He goes from

to 

snarking at Lucifer about the Hand of God being a one-hitter, so in this moment I think it’s very self-focussed and while maybe not concerned about Cas, also not making the moment about Delphine either, because even though he’s referencing that she used it up, the emotions are focussed on this confrontation, and essentially they’re more concerned with buying time in the urgent moment and not dying.

This also riles up Lucifer enough to come straight at Dean (and I think it goes with what [an anon was saying about how tragic Dean and Cas’s lack of communication this episode is](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/139629548248/ive-been-having-vague-thoughts-about-how-tragic) that Sam gets to have Cas break through Lucifer to stop him hurting him, but Dean never gets this tested: it’s 100% likely after what we just saw with Sam that Cas would have stopped Lucifer to save Dean, but the moment is delayed or left untested so we don’t get to see the same thing happen with them yet, leaving it, if it happens, for a different confrontation another day.) and Sam banishes him. After that we have one of the most picked over moments (so thankfully I can use [someone else’s gifs](http://weeklyspn.tumblr.com/post/139535582450), credit linked :P)

  
  


He goes from staring directly at Lucifer in a challenge to this, and he’s had no real chance except that 2 frame moment at the start of this sequence and a split second while Lucifer was monologuing to even process what had happened to Cas and actually think about it. Given the flow of the moment it’s pretty logical to assume this is mostly/all about the Cas revelation and with the danger being over he can process his shock and really  _understand_  what it was that just happened rather than just dealing with it as he had been doing.

Rather than fade to black or do a regular scene change, this moment fades from Dean leaning mournfully on the pillar to the dock, which is an effect that creates continuity between the moments: Dean’s shock and sadness about Cas is carried on outside to the dock, which, as picked to pieces, is a DeanCas thing since 4x20 and strongly associated with their relationship, as much as it is related to the vague shipping theme of the episode. Therefore it’s emotionally intuitive to the viewer to keep connecting the anguish about Cas we were still seeing on Dean’s face as we faded out of that scene to the dock he was briefly layered on top of, even though the first shot is of Sam giving Dean masses of space, for who knows how long. The scene is introduced, therefore as time having passed and Dean having needed  _more_  processing time than you could imply just from however long it would take for him to change his clothes, probably have a shower, and announce “that’s it, we’re going to my dramatic sulking dock, I have shit to work out” and for them to get there - not only all that, but after they get there Sam backs off and leaves Dean to think and does his own moody thinking alone before reconvening with Dean to share notes or whatever this is. ALL THIS is linked from Dean’s long reaction shot of shock and sadness after losing Cas.

This is then confirmed by the fact that after x amount of implied considerable time has passed, that when Sam sits next to Dean, the first thing Dean says unprompted for subject matter is “Cas.”

Since someone came on anon to quibble with me saying that Dean had been struggling for tears about the Cas thing and that was all reserved for the submarine and Delphine, here he is in the exact instant the camera first cuts to his face-on shot in this conversation:

His eyes and nose are already red, and the same teary quality about his eyes remains for the entire scene, rather than only appearing later.

When he says “save Cas” his voice breaks for the second time on “Cas” and he swallows hard and looks like this:

Here’s the swallow because this is legitimately the moment that killed me when I realised how CLOSE to crying Dean was. Like, this is my vengeful ghost typing all this :P

He opens his mouth again at the end but he’s not actually saying anything. Just being an over emotional wreck :’) It’s Sam who resumes the conversation, which Dean seemed to have been trying to end with a very final, positive statement. 

Anyway, Dean’s voice breaks once more on “not possible” and we’re all still on the subject of Cas with absolutely no interference from the angst about the submarine. [As I and some others have said](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/139550764608/yarnyfan-deansmanlyfeels) I think it does contribute all the way through to his overall sense of hopelessness as well as his feelings that everyone is sacrificing themselves and he’s just going to watch them all die, as he did with the submarine, but it’s a complex intertwined moment, and for a good chunk of the back and forth here it’s all about Cas.

I know one of the complaints is that rounding off this conversation with discussion of the submarine takes away from this by making it about two things and somehow invalidates everything that Dean felt up until that point by making the end about the submarine, or that it’s somehow a “cover” for his feelings about Cas. And I get that in episodes like 10x23 they used Rudy to do the same to the Cas guilt trip vision in the mirror, but this episode handled it much more honestly and authentically, and there’s a long section where Dean is openly wrecked about Cas and just Cas, and it does not feel like it’s in the same spirit at all, as he’s allowed a long moment to be miserable about him. I don’t think this amount of raw feeling expressed in this part of the conversation can be put down “just” to anything from the other part of the episode contributing to Dean’s sadness, and this moment is ALLOWED to be about Cas. 

Anyway.

Once again like with after saying “Save Cas”, after “not possible” Dean turns away and allows the silence to exist as long as it cares to. It’s Sam who interrupts this proposed silence and asks Dean about what happened on the submarine. And Dean, already established by the Cas half of the conversation to be utterly emotionally wrecked, continues on with emotional consistency based on having an absolutely gutting day, to report how he felt about it, building on pre-existing tears FROM worrying about Cas to continue looking so shiny-eyed and miserable. It’s only after he’s been made to think about the submarine again because of Sam’s prompting that Dean reaches out and asks what happened to the nazi ship. In my first watch I assumed immediately that Dean was distracting himself from the Cas issue by asking about the ship, trying to see if there was any victory at all to be had out of the day, and in a way he gets that when Sam answers. 

With the song at the end, a couple of years ago, we’d have argued immediately that the song at the end was a Destiel thing, no matter what anyone said, because  _obviously_  it links to the main subplot (har har) of the episode and Delphine, but the overall point of the episode in the main arc accomplishes, for now, exactly one overall goal: let Dean and Sam know that Cas is possessed by Lucifer. That is all this episode needed to do and that’s the wider plot beat that it was meeting. Whether details like God-touched things become relevant later or the warding spells is used or  _whatever_ , the main point of this episode was to get us to the dock with Dean mourning Cas’s loss, and therefore everything else in the episode only works to create a thematic emotional backdrop to the main plot event. Yes, Delphine should affect Dean in this moment: that loss is comparative to the longer plot arc loss and his years old relationship with Cas takes the precedence, even if the song is topical to a one episode character.

My immediate emotional response to the whole last five minutes of the episode was utter devastation for Dean and I felt it was inarguably strong that he was wrecked by the reveal about Cas and that the last part of the episode was broadly focussed on that pain and shock. 

I know there’s a lot of bitterness and a lot of fear that the show won’t pay off and we won’t get any delivery on anything but I do feel that at the very least this episode all on its own proves just how much Dean cares about Cas… I suppose you can argue any way you like about the way he shows it or the other details of their relationship and how they interact, but I still refuse to doubt the emotion behind it all.

* * *

 

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Hi! Ive been really confused about the whole Dean Cas relationship. Like I know Dean cares for Cas deeply but it's no where near what Cas has done for Dean(giving up everything he has) So like am I not noticing something here or like is their dynamic like that?

* * *

I don’t think relationships should be measured by what one gives up for the other. I think it’s something the show accidentally imparts with all the dramatic self-sacrifice but it’s something the show has also been trying to dismantle since season 8, with the plot thread of showing the codependency between Sam and Dean as unhealthy instead of something to glorify, and attempting to move them to a healthier place with more people to rely on and less dependence on each other to the point of ceasing to function when the other is dead.

I’m sorry to keep going back to [@superspecpod](https://tmblr.co/mtKCG9uOUHCkvUQrwQcnCZA) but maybe it’s just because it’s out loud meta so the words stick in my head differently, but I’m remembering them talking in the most recent (”super lost plotlines” or something) about how Cas would want to see Dean sacrifice for him in a way for the narrative to show us Dean cares as much for Cas as he does for Sam, and as Cas does for him. But at the same time really really don’t want it for Dean’s sake because it will be putting him in a really bad place, regressing his dependent tendencies back again but putting them on Cas instead of Sam, and just be another character development mountain to climb.

I think it’s also weird that the way the show has been telling it, things swing around about how much we think one or the other loves more desperately than the other - I remember reading season 8 meta that was deeply upset or addressing deep upset that Dean seemed to love Cas enormously but Cas wouldn’t reciprocate and was there a chance Cas would EVER seem to love Dean as much as Dean loves him? 

I also think that as of 12x19 the show is officially starting to convey that Cas’s give it all up for Dean over and over pattern is just as bad for him as Dean’s similar problem with sacrificing for Sam, so the fact Cas keeps on doing it is a problem he needs help with not a way that he gestures he loves Dean so much more.

I think honestly, though, you can see how much Dean loves Cas ALL the time and it does not have to be in grand gestures to be enormous and meaningful. He bonds very closely to Cas immediately and disproportionately trusts him to talk to about deep and meaningful things, like their conversation in 4x07, or the one in the hospital bed in 4x16, or the absent fathers conversation in 5x17 (and I think actually a gifset just fell out my queue recently showing Cas giving up on God in 5x16 and the reaction shot Dean had in the middle of that - he FEELS for Cas). I think he has a deep and important feeling for Cas that grows naturally and well and is the healthiest and best relationship he has in his life - even over Bobby who is a bit of a double edged sword of tough love and alcoholism enabling. 

I once asked what the earliest moment of like… just raw affection for Cas Dean ever showed was and the answer was fairly unanimous about the end of 5x04:

[Originally posted by eonchian](https://tmblr.co/ZO5csk1m9oHkm)

I mean, like… Yeah, this is what their dynamic is but I think Dean’s honestly got the better end of the stick because he’s not navigating it as an angel who’s never bothered to care about relationship drama in a zillion years until walking smack into an epic romance, and Dean is far from perfect at handling his feelings for Cas but in no way is this a sad thing for Cas that Dean somehow won’t return his feelings clearly enough via sacrificing himself.

I think for Dean a lot of it is marked by losing Cas and reacting in ways which show us how much he cared but couldn’t say it - I don’t think it’s defined by actions so much as what Dean has not SAID to Cas. 

In 6x20, which for me is The Shipping Episode that got me on this track way back when, Cas and Dean BOTH show love and heartbreak and it’s the nature of it which breaks them up. Cas loves Dean fiercely and protectively and the metaphor of him watching invisibly and deciding what is best for Dean applies broadly to him as an angel in this position of what he thinks is responsibility or on the flip side, in service to Dean as a guardian angel of sorts (and in this episode he openly admits he considers himself to be their guardian, which I see as basically another seal breaking on his downfall that year). Dean on the other hand is devoted and protective emotionally, desperate to give Cas the benefit of doubt and not to believe that Cas - CAS, you guys! - could possibly be working behind their backs on a stinking awful plan. The betrayal hurts Dean so much and it’s all shown in contrast to Bobby and Sam, who form a fairly rational side to the issue, and walk on eggshells around Dean about it. As much as the episode reveals Cas’s investment in Dean, it reveals Dean’s in Cas. And by the last scene where they talk privately, that it really is about THEM and their personal philosophy and their investment in each other, that is what the whole mess is truly about. 

And in season 7 Dean takes Cas’s death and betrayal extremely hard (and personally, since Sam and Bobby are still hanging out not taking it so hard) and cites it repeatedly as why he’s so messed up and having issues with everything… And then Cas comes back and Dean gets most of an episode to react to it, plus private time to talk to Cas in 7x21 in one of the best scenes of the show where they play Sorry and when you take it from Dean’s side, he’s so so frustrated and feels he’s still lost Cas and can’t talk to him, and he just wants things to go back to how they were and skip to the end of the game where it’s all better and they’ve apologised because it’s just so hard to deal with all of this at once that Cas being back has brought up for him… Like this is his face when he’s working up the courage to go into the room and talk to Cas…

And everything about it, really - just that it’s on Dean to have this conversation and it’s on Dean to make up with Cas. Season 7′s entire plot can only resolve when Dean properly makes up with Cas.  _Getting Dick_ is ONLY something they can do when Dean and Cas are friends again. And that entire thing rests on Dean to work through his complicated feelings about Cas and give him a heartfelt moment which will get to the apologies and forgiveness PROPERLY and meaningfully… I mean we do not talk enough about how season 7 DEPENDS on the Destiel arc resolving in order for them to resolve the main arc killing the big bad stuff. It’s basically a power of love thing. Although it’s not intentional because they killed Cas off for good at the start of the season, it ended up turning the structure of the season into betrayal and death, to resurrection and forgiveness. And as the season starts on Godstiel right in the crosshairs and ends on Dean and Cas making up, fighting Dick, and in Purgatory together (and then not), it’s genuinely the most Destiel-structured season I can think of, because it plays THAT key a role… And because of the way Cas is written, it’s almost entirely about DEAN’S love for Cas, and not the other way around. Cas is incapacitated on dealing with this arc for the entire season except “I’ll find some way to redeem myself to you” and Cas’s memory coming back flashbacks - all the rest is stuff we get from Dean’s perspective or about Dean’s feelings. He kept the trenchcoat!!!

And in season 8 where people were worried Cas wouldn’t reciprocate Dean, we have all the stuff like 8x07′s Gothic romance horror intro of Cas in visions and lightning storms and Dean mis-remembering what happened in Purgatory to not feel Cas’s rejection so sharply and blame himself for Cas dying instead, and Cas controlled and disappearing off because Naomi was stopping him from chilling with his friends or repenting for what he did to Heaven on his own terms… I actually think that 8x17 shows more strongly that Cas loves Dean because of all the stuff we see from inside Cas’s head and all the dead Deans, so I guess the meta I mentioned was more worried that Cas would never be in a place he could say or understand it? Or very shortsighted, forgetting season 6. But anyway in the crypt scene Dean helps Cas overcome the brainwashing by pleading to him from a place of love and that’s after what is basically summed up by “if he’s so sketchy why were you praying to him” because 8x16 really showed that Dean cared about CAS as much as he cared about Cas’s ability to heal Sam, when he made the deeply intimate prayer to him. 

And in 8x23 Dean hangs with Cas for 8 hours and gets halfway through the ET goes home speech before it’s interrupted, but clearly shows how much it hurts him that Cas is locking himself away in Heaven. I don’t care that it’s understated and interrupted, it’s a hugely powerful “I don’t want to say goodbye” moment and it means as much to me as a huge personal sacrifice or something, because this is all showing Dean getting to grips with just how much Cas means to him and how much he doesn’t want to lose him, which like season 7 focusing on Dean learning to talk to Cas and forgive him, are all core relationship building blocks to show us how much Dean loves Cas and to help Dean through understanding Cas and how he feels… Since the “I need you” he’s on a path where he’s struggling to find the right words, and between them it’s REALLY words not actions.

In season 9 he is worried about Cas to start with, flips out in 9x03 while looking for him, but then the show wants us to know how fucked up things are between him and Sam that it uses kicking Cas out as another blow for how far Dean will go to protect Sam. It’s meant to be awful because Cas means SO MUCH to Dean it wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t care, but it’s like the sort of violation of cutting off a limb to save Sam. And the fact it hurts so much and he feels so awful and goes to Cas in 9x06 and struggles with telling him or not in 9x09 is important too. It’s small things but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant that Dean spends this time with Cas struggling and guilty. 

When he takes the Mark he gets distant from Cas and yet he still has emotionally charged interactions and in 9x22, all angry and messed up with the Mark, he brings up a lot of their past conflict out of mis-directed fear for Cas (which season 12 has in their fight in 12x10 as well) and yet at the end of the episode he saves basically his last smile for months for Cas because in the middle of everything he takes the lesson that Cas will do anything for him and seems to truly care for him - and it’s all being contrasted against how messed up things are with Sam, that he snaps at him that it’s a dictatorship and then walks around the corner to TRY and be gentle with Cas… 

[Originally posted by cgstiel](https://tmblr.co/ZkrA7u1hlN3XO)

Again, really understated but when its showing his raw feelings for Cas vs Sam at that point, it’s all flipped around from the start of the season being unfairly weighed towards Sam to now looking better for Cas, because he’s so done with having a brother (as demon!Dean will tell us at great length in a few episodes >.>) - I think also the fact Dean is becoming demonised contrasted with the “in love with humanity” stuff going on with Cas is meant to be deeply ironic that as Cas is finally getting to grips with his feelings for Dean via Metatron’s endless taunting, Dean is losing the ability to give back, and it’s a tragedy that he loses this softness.

In season 10 Dean looks so lost when Cas leaves in 10x03 and that’s all miscommunication and not saying the right words to him when Cas has now moved around to being the one who leaves (and I think Dean thinks Cas and Hannah are an item, which does NOT help). He’s distant with Cas all season (except the Burger Date where he sends Sam away to talk to Cas and ask how he’s doing :’)) but there’s the Colette parallel and I think it’s generally accepted if you stayed on board with it that 10x22 proved that Cas was Colette, Dean’s romantic figure and with 10x14 more clear as well that Crowley was Cain’s Abaddon in that list, since 9x11 implied they’d had a thing as well so there was a love triangle with them just as with Dean Cas and Crowley. Anyway 10x22 was awful but the culmination of that irony about Cas losing Dean’s heart, and a tiny weeny hope for Cas that Dean didn’t kill him and could still be saved from the Mark. And another communication block that Cas poured out a ton of huge emotional words and Dean was in a place where he could not reply or accept that Cas would be with him forever whether he likes it or not.

In season 11 thankfully we go back to Dean caring about Cas and he does so in spades, going back to being the one to talk to him on the phone, asking about him, and then when he’s possessed, worrying about him and driving himself spare trying to find a way to save him. 11x17 only happened because Sam wanted to get Dean out of the house to stop him wasting away into a pile of obscure lore books about Lucifer. They didn’t NEED to flash back and explain how the Winchesters got on the case, at least as far back as the Bunker, but they did and it was 99% to tell us that Sam was concerned about how hurt Dean was. The end of 11x14 was also more importantly about Cas because even if it was about an incidental thing that happened in one episode, those things always serve the main arc and since the submarine wasn’t ever a thing again, that last look was aaaaall about Cas or to compare how Dean felt about the smaller thing to the bigger thing and make it that much harder to handle - losing Cas.

Dean is shown to OBVIOUSLY and DEEPLY love Cas without doing anything stupid to save him, but in 11x18 he argues to the point of ridiculousness about protecting Cas to achieve their goals, and when they inevitably get to the confrontation, Crowley and Sam concede to Dean’s wish to talk to Cas first and at least TRY to get him to kick Lucifer out. And Dean is a wreck while this all goes down:

[Originally posted by bubblemish](https://tmblr.co/Zr9R0k24rQO7A)

and keeps yelling for Cas long after Lucifer regains control, Amara shows up, etc. And considering the season he had so far with Amara, the episode shows that hands down weird bond with God’s sister or no, if Cas is in the room then Dean’s first priority is him.

The whole set up is soaked in love narrative stuff thanks to Amara and earlier MotW in the midseason using buckets of tropes and outright telling Dean he’s in love with someone… Dean might not have done anything self-sacrificing at this point but it’s obvious that his love is not just, like… caring a lot for Cas… but something huge and defining and powerful enough for him to forget all the enormous forces in the room beyond his control and to call for Cas and to fight for him above everything else. 

And in 11x21 he goes and does something reckless and potentially self-sacrificing to buy time for Sam to take the weirdest group of characters ever to rescue Lucifer - and by Lucifer he means Cas. He goes and confronts Amara and she sees that he’s distracted and buying time and that once again his concern for Cas is a stronger pull on his thoughts than even the great abyss of peace and quiet she offers him if she were to consume him. Essentially, he loves Cas enough to overcome this call of oblivion which he and Amara both say he’s deeply drawn to. 

In 11x23 there’s more miscommunication and not having the right words where he calls Cas a brother while trying to convey how much he means to him, still ducking under what Cas means to him AND Sam which I think was important in that moment to let Cas know he’s family through and through - and season 12 works on this more by using Mary to create an even larger family unit for him to be a part of. I think Cas saying he loves them in 12x12 raises the bar to the sort of communication Dean needs to reciprocate and hasn’t done verbally. But aside from all the other regular stuff where Dean is singled out to be concerned about Cas, like… all of 12x10 for example, where Dean’s concern for Cas is clearly shown and compared to romantic love, and to be the more pure, uncomplicated, just plain… I love you… feeling going on there. He also corrects finally that when he’s pissed at Cas it’s because he’s worried because he loves him so much he doesn’t want Cas to get hurt not that he’s angry about what Cas did. Though of course he doesn’t use “love”, because that would get us too far. But still, the burden of showing love and care to Cas is on Dean. And oh boy now I can crack out my favourite gif :D

The Hand Clench, aka I love you so much it hurts but I’m scared to express it so I will just touch you in a lingering way and then  be really alarmed by how it feels because touching you isn’t like touching everyone else. In 12x12 his touch also lingers when he helps Cas up at the end. And he denies how bad it is when Cas is dying and we get personal reactions about how it affects Dean emotionally that we do not get with Sam and Mary in the same way, that they’re concerned for Cas directly, but Dean is both that AND taking a personal loss at the same time.

And then at some undefined point in the story, Dean gave Cas a mixtape, and honestly just find my mixtape tag (top 13 zepp traxx) and have a scroll about what everyone else shrieked. But it’s a gesture of love, however you read it (unless your reading is PRETENDING that this isn’t a trope and if it is the trope means nothing), and a scene with beautiful romantic subtext. And this is meant to convey to us that offscreen Dean does gestures of kindness to Cas, and that away even from Cas Dean stressed over making this tape. And there is something of a revelation in that Dean made Cas a mixtape, because holy crap is it a powerful emotional thing to do and a way to convey some deep deep feelings of love and care. Like, Dean is at “give your crush a mixtape” levels of feeling for Cas. Non-verbally, he’s screaming at Cas that he loves him.

And again, that is a HEALTHY, NORMAL romantic trope which to me has far more power than self-sacrifice and giving things up for love. It’s about building things UP for love. For creating and sharing. For a scene that makes it clear that Dean just wants Cas AROUND, for him not to leave, for them to be together as a team and a family. And we’re right back to the irony that Cas is struggling to belong and not on this same level where Dean is working through stuff he probably hasn’t felt and acted on since, like… Cassie… Maybe trying to do nice things for Lisa sometimes between season 5 and 6. That feeling of love being powerful in a good way where it brings things into your life and you want to foster closeness and connection and not lose this person over and over and over again. 

So of course Cas leaves to do things on a big scale to protect Dean in ways Dean doesn’t want. Like season 6, he’d rather just Cas be WITH him through thick and thin and the fight be horrible and hard to win but at least they’re in it together. 

And Cas is the sort of person that I think Dean would want to fight alongside and win with, instead of his repeatedly predicted endgame of dying alone and bloody in a fight. That sort of, I don’t want to die for you, I want to live for you love, as some gifset I reblogged recently smashed my heart with. Which has been shown in several of these examples like 11x21 where he overcame what was essentially Amara’s call for him to die because of Cas. And in 12x09 Cas metaphorically kills Billie in a way to end Dean’s determination to sacrifice for his family and make these deals (because of course he made that deal meaning to be the Winchester to die and it all went out of his control). I think it’s something they’re working on bit by bit and it’s only just starting to sneak into the main arcs, like how I think it only became a real discussion for Cas in 12x19 not to sacrifice for them any more and just to be with Dean. 

But I really really do not want Dean’s love for Cas to not be seen as equal or balanced until he does something to sacrifice himself for Cas because I think the love he shows is already strong, and good, and weirdly uncomplicated at least in many of the ways things in Dean’s life ARE complicated. Maybe it has some other complications but NOT the ones which make his family so painful for him and create these terrible displays of self-sacrifice. I don’t think Dean doing that for Cas will make his love somehow more valid. And likewise I think he’ll be happier with his love for Sam or Mary when he doesn’t feel the obligation to die for them because that’s as much about his self-worth and other struggles than his actual LOVE for them. I don’t think you can love harder by hurting yourself for someone. (Which just reminds me of 12x07 and Lucifer thinking this was what was good and getting that poor fan to carve Vince’s name into her chest.)

So… gah. Yes of course their dynamic is different but it is no way imbalanced that Dean does not love Cas ~as much~ just because Cas self-sacrifices for Dean. It’s a false measure of love which can’t be use for point scoring  or it just ignores every other feeling they ever have.


	5. Dabb vs Cars - some Destiel Nonsense

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##  **Dabb vs cars**

Surprisingly, not the next round in my ongoing, bitter feud about his continuity problems. A “I come in peace” study on parking.

I watched 10x09 today and I did the usual OTP “aw they’re so far apart” sad heart feeling at the shot of them all outside Sharkey’s.

No, not Dean n Cas.

The Impala and Pimpmobile.

Anyway it got me thinking about in that moment it represented pretty well how Dean and Cas were doing with each other. Of course there isn’t room to park beside Cas’s car, so Dean goes and parks on the other side of the door, leaving this big gap between them, bigger because there’s a parking mark thingy Cas is about to trip over before the shot abruptly ends. (I hope Misha was okay.) The cars have a clear line of sight to each other, but there’s just something so unutterably sad about there being no way for them to park side by side, per Cas’s parking, and Dean putting that extra space between them. (Also so they can go in the door… I’d say unobstructed but the longer I watch the gif the more I become convinced there’s footage out there of Misha ruining the impression of Cas’s reserved dignity…)

In the context of season 10, where Destiel was at right then was the first time they’d seen each other since 10x03, when Dean cleared his bed for Cas like, thanks for saving me from myself pls make yourself comfy, and Cas freaked out and gabbled some stuff about work and Hannah and such and told Dean to rest up, then fled the scene. Dean is pissed off Cas called for help over trying to deal with Claire (and it kind of looks like making excuses of busywork to not come home, when you flee with an apparently important mission and it turns out you’re wandering around trying to earn back brownie points with your vessel’s daughter, having randomly and abruptly swapped onto a personal mission without telling Dean a word of it) and in general the car placement amused me by seeming to echo how they were doing.

Being me, obviously thinking about that made me start thinking about Dabb, cars, and his old Carver era patterns. He got the one per season (two if we were lucky) Deep Emotional DeanCas Talk, to give us a real, solid moment to show how they were truly doing. 8x08, 9x10, 9x22, 10x09, and 11x10 spring to mind though obviously in other episodes he wrote with them they also still shared some pretty epic emotional moments or there were other strong Destiel things. However he is the one who gave us Cas’s original car, and two of these instances are directly before the Big Talk to tide things over and give us the emotional background for later. I figured some thoughts about some notable Dabb car stuff would be a nice thing to do. After my amused nostalgia run through Carver era moments, I’ve included Dabb era in general and picked out some other moments.

9x10 is the start of all this, once Cas finally gets some wheels of his own. The most interesting set piece barely involves any driving, but is the first time the Impala and Continental are parked beside each other. Like, RIGHT beside. Like, Dean n Cas should be this close to each other all the time. Cas’s car is a step ahead (I mean, I assume so he could get out the door). All episode Dean n Cas are a beautiful emotionally supportive unit, but Dean can’t cope with this, and so he gets in his car and leaves, pulling away from the closeness he’s offered from his family, the thing with the cars being exactly what he did when he walked away from them on the bridge too. I mean, that’s fairly obvious, I’m just amused after I went back to look, HOW closely the two cars were parked, like they wanted Cas’s car in that shot, next to Dean’s, and they’d force the most unrealistic parking job ever when there’s all that unused space around them, to get all the random details into the shot they needed. As a bonus, Dean had to have been the one to park the Impala so close blocking Cas’s car in. Unconscious desire to be so close to him and to keep him? He’s still recovering from asking him to leave.

(I know the Impala and Continental shared space in several end of season 9 episodes but not 9x22 as far as I recall in the earlier parts, and the Worst Dabb Vs Cars Fuckery Of Them All occurs in the final driving moment of that episode, just putting Cas IN the Impala for the drive home despite the fact his car ends up the Bunker at the start of 9x23… That’s a symbolic gesture of what he was trying to convey in the moment of Cas sitting in the back of the car but for the sake of talking about how they park together, useless. I feel like in 9x18 it’s just a reminder Cas HAS the car, and the show doesn’t do anything useful with it to represent Cas…)

Onto 11x10, and honestly my favourite of Dabb’s Dean n Cas chatting scenes because it’s technically pretty superfluous except for the fact he really really wanted a final DeanCas chat before Cas got Casifered, and so he made one heck of a driving continuity snarl to wrangle it. Obviously Cas followed Dean’s longing to his spot because how else… Anyway, he parks a long long way off. In season 11 he’s feeling very distanced from Dean by his anxiety and trauma. This is the epitome of the “I came as soon as you called” behaviour, with Cas dropping everything to come help Dean, and romantic blurring into focus walk aside, the long shot shows us beautifully that Cas is hesitant to approach, and maintaining the distance with Dean. After all the season 10 and early 11 drama between them, including several rounds of mind controlled punch ups, they’re fragile and miserable, and Cas’s last interaction with Dean on screen was an angry and frustrating one. Cas himself bridges the distance betwen them but his car waiting off in the background suggests his reservations, and the rest of the episode spells out everything, before he chooses to do something he thinks will help move their cars closer, as it were.

Entering Dabb era proper, in 12x02 we see Cas’s new truck (still with hay) and Dean pulling up to it. Obviously they’ve got their mission to save Sam, the jokes about Mary being brought along to chaperone their date, etc. But since the car conversation in 11x23 the ball has been in Dean’s court to approach Cas, and I would assume the mythical instance of mixtape giving is somewhere between 12x01 and 12x19; the point is, here, as the first 2 episodes of season 12 in general showed (and Dean in 12x22 confirmed talking about how happy he was to have Cas and Mary back in the same breath), Dean approaches Cas, parking right behind his truck, as a symbol of the confidence and comfort they have now. They work great as a team in this part of the season, although Cas has been standing around by his lonely parked truck waiting for most of the episode up to that point, and is forced to continue standing by the truck for most of the rest of the episode.

12x12 Cas is still in the “I’ll just wait here then” mode, hanging out at their designated meeting place as Sam, Dean, Mary and Wally arrive in a convoy and park on the other side of this parking lot, so he has to come to join them (Dean rotating on the spot as he does so… heh, I love that moment.) By the middle of season 12 Cas has run away to find Lucifer, echoing 10x03’s parting, and also killed for them and invited cosmic consequences, and in 12x10 given a firm well-communicated emotional talk to help him feel included and loved, and yet he also leaves to search for Kelly some more, echoing other times he’s gone off to do a side project and been very much on the outside. Once again he’s waiting for them to catch up, and Dean seems to breeze by him - and there’s so many other people with them (and part of why he left in 12x03 was to give Sam and Dean space with Mary, exclusing himself from the family). In the diner scene Cas has the whole waitress thing to deal with, with Dean acting up around so many people with conflicting needs to perform. Cas has been waiting for an incredibly long time, but if you ever needed a more firm “the ball is in your court” it’s the “I love you” at the end of the episode.

12x19 also has a important “where the cars are placed” sequence, which you could really do with a whole gifset of, but of course the Impala is there because Kelly stole it, and it’s been left off to the side by them; likewise Sam and Dean are left to the side by them as they drive off. Sam and Dean placed the truck before they did that and took it back (and all the stuff about Cas and Dean and fixing the truck in the episode is a whole ‘nother thing)… From this angle it looks ominously like the park in which Dean found Mary, with the lights behind the trees going on - of course night has just fallen rather than the sun coming up, and Cas is driving away from the light. As Dean walked Mary into their lives, newly resurrected, Cas drives out of their lives >.> Between all the stealing cars and rushing into save Cas, the gap between them as they’re parked is obvious and as a result of the circumstances. They’re apart because there’s too much going on, Kelly made off with Cas in the car, and Sam and Dean were helpless chasing after them. The distance and swapping around of cars and using them as part of the chaos is very effective. Cas calmly takes possesion of his truck again, freshly fixed by Dean, but drives off with Kelly. In 12x23 they steal some stock Destiel phrases to exchange, and it’s touching the truck which opens the rift. I had a nose around the outdoors scenes and couldn’t spot Cas’s truck and the Impala even on the same side of the building, and honestly am kind of confused about where the truck went. Not, as I said, that I’m trying to continue the feud with this post. But I mean.

*clears throat*

~~I’m just saying he ruined the continuity in 12x01 for 12x02 by doing the exact same thing as 9x22 by just not using Cas’s truck when it would make sense to take as many vehicles as they can get their hands on so they could split up… Obviously all the many set pieces to do with cars worked best/could only work if there was just the Impala but it’s all style over function again… So in 12x02 to let Cas split up to help they add an extra day to let him get the truck so he can follow leads and do the legwork, and Mary and Dean end up back at the Bunker, immediately falling back into old static patterns when it would have made so much sense to just have them in a motel NEARBY instead of abandoning their hot trail on finding Sam so Mary could shower… He handed them that excuse on a platter and killed the urgency and Dean n Cas were split up all episode when they could have been at least local-ish to each other and maybe had that phonecall in person and and and… shh Lizzy~~


	6. The Crypt Scenes Red String On A Corkboard Post

> **[lalascreation](http://lalascreation.tumblr.com/)**  asked:
> 
> What exactly qualifies as a “crypt scene”?

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It’s a complicated equation that goes like

external influence, causing violence/uncontrollable behaviour, broken by a close friend with unstated but romantic interest on the side of the controlled one, who is not a blood family member, unrequited in interest, just a friend/colleague, or actually an enemy. If it’s a blood family member/otherwise non-blood but obvious paternal/maternal tie instead it becomes a swan song parallel. 

That’s a lot to hold in your head but it’s really important to track how it all works and the patterns established around it. 1x22 set up the Swan Song parallel which Sam had failed in 1x10 when he was affected with the anger ghost affliction and it was all a progress from there to get him to the Swan Song moment where he manages not to kill Dean, as John had done in 1x22 when possessed with Azazel. I strongly doubt the actual plot was plotted, but the themes were clear that this was the long-term arc and the show skates around it from season 1 right through. 

In season 7, Bobby is the last victim of a Swan Song parallel before Carver era, and in 7x23 he is beating the crap out of Sam against the side of a vehicle when he sees his own reflection in the van window and realises what he’s doing and pulls himself back from the vengeful brink and is allowed to move on. 

In 11x14, Cas manages to stop Lucifer from exploding Sam all over the Bunker, but then, curiously, hands back control in order to save Dean, showing a weird distinction in confrontation types. Casifer never attacks Dean in the same way, and their confrontation is staged utterly differently. 

In Dabb era, where things are more kaleidoscopic in parallel nature, Mary also gets a fairly standard one of these in 12x03 which is a much later loop back to the original, and the conclusion of 13x23 is Lucifer failing it vs Jack and his OWN NATURE, which had been the attacking force in 5x22 after all, and it’s a Dabb era level subversion which hands Jack over to his true family (via all the challenging them to kill each other that Lucifer did which took the whole parallel out of his hands in a way and abstracted it into theirs) and reveals that Lucifer is abusive and unredeemable to Jack and I would HOPE now with every member of the blood and non-blood family successfully indoctrinated into it we don’t need any more of these direct Swan Song parallels. 

So why are the crypt scene parallels different and stand out from this pattern? In Carver era there’s a strong side branch of these stories of supernatural control and begging people to stop with a very specific nature which fits this formula from above, where romance is involved in the main parallels, or absence of romance. There are multiple instances where family connections fail to break it, and comments like “I know you’re in there” and other dialogue from the Crypt Scene in 8x17 are thrown around, before and after that moment, where the pass and fail rate is directly connected to whether there is a romantic connection or not. This starts early on in season 8, from Dean being rage-possessed by the spectre and not stopping for Sam, to Charlie being the means Gilda breaks control from the spellbook, through to season 11 where the Soul Eater refuses to let Sam’s “i know you’re in there” stop it when it attacks him as Dean. Other scenes are staged in the same way with other elements, from the 8x16 set up with the Prometheus and Artemis parallel the episode before the crypt scene, through to the fantastically convoluted method of Mick being the one torn with a mental control he couldn’t break and Sam protecting Eileen while trying to talk Mick out of it, or Ishim taunting Dean that banishing him would kill Cas after he was the one who violently attacked Cas with visual framing almost identical to the direction of 10x22 in some respects and getting Dean to back off from that to protect Cas. All with parallels to his own relationship - romantically coded - with Lily.

And then there’s Thomas J Wright, who directed, yep, 12x10, and 10x22 and 8x17 and 11x21 which had its own odd twist on it, and a bunch of other episodes with suspiciously similar framing and attacks. 10x22 stands out because it has the exact same framing as an attack by a controlled Jensen-acted character against a romantically connected character in Dark Angel, which he ALSO directed. 10x22 also by their own admission had a fight scene they changed, with Misha, Jensen and TJW all agreeing to frame it differently, with Cas refusing to fight back, and the stabbing the book while straddling Cas thing clearly came from TJW’s own personal notebook of favourite confrontation ideas given he’d filmed such a similar one early in his career. He’s also added little bits of unscripted storytelling via the direction in his episodes which continue to build up this idea, such as the Amara touching Cas’s heart to contact Dean silent suggestion, and we don’t know if the back and forth in the scenes where they save Lucifer (and by that we mean Cas) later in that episode but again the dialogue between Amara and Dean weirdly parallels what’s going on there as if they broke a connection. 9x23 also directed by him includes the side by side of Cas smashing the angel tablet and Dean falling to the floor with a huge thunderclap after Metatron has stabbed him, perhaps highlighting the irony that Cas did the thing to save Dean seconds after Dean was stabbed, but also “breaking the connection” between the angel tablet, a source of powerful supernatural magic, and Metatron, who was causing violence against Dean, who was not fully in control of himself and about to lose what control he had left as he died and became a demon powered completely by his id, a reverse crypt scene where the reverse was not so much who was a participant but the effects of a failure. Of course the angel tablet was the fought-over artefact in 8x17. And in 9x22, the previous episode, Cas might not have been controlled, but Hannah, dressed like Naomi and sounding an awful lot like her too, challenged Cas between an us and them with killing Dean in the centre of it, to which he said “I can’t.”

We knew the real reverse crypt scene was coming pretty much immediately in season 9 after Dean got the Mark and we were worrying he’d be controlled by it and become violent and maybe attack Cas, who was paired with him by the Colette parallel. In the end Cas asked Dean to stop, as per Colette, and we got the reverse crypt scene where Dean attacked Cas while under the control of the Mark, and only stopped himself killing Cas at the last moment before walking away. Of course, we also knew it was going to happen like that because in 10x13 a trenchcoat-wearing wife pleaded her raging vengeful ghost husband to stop hurting people (while he was about to kill Dean), and her words were enough to let the husband pass on into peace. 

Now Dean’s controlled again, but it’s by Michael, which means we could get a lot of different variations. Dean’s never had this sort of mytharc possession in a way that mirrors Sam being possessed by Lucifer, so a Swan Song flip between them is now a card on the table. But a reverse crypt scene style encounter between Michael and Cas might too. They could look very superficially similar, and Michael could also attack Mary, Bobby and now Jack, who are all inducted into the family via takes on this. The interesting difference is going to be in how it’s told and maybe just even who is directing what encounters, what parallels are offered and what language is used, down to whether it’s repeating things phrased one word or the other difference between conversation from 8x17 or 5x22 or other variations of these 2 thematic trees… If it fits Swan Song parallels it’s about family, but the crypt scene style parallels are the ones written with romantic language, and only used in scenarios where romance is implied, or to show it fails when romance isn’t present, even in encounters between characters for whom a Swan Song parallel would work perfectly. 

(Funnily enough, in 12x22, it’s Toni, the Naomi parallel, who puts Mary and Dean under, after manipulating Mary, but Dean’s speech to her mirrors ones to John in season 2, and a father/daughter mirror in 3x05, but it’s Ketch who wakes them both up and breaks Toni’s control :P)

* * *

 

So basically you can’t talk to [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) about anything, or it just goes all

And in this case it’s trying to explain, like, the ENTIRE tangled web behind the whole “crypt scenes” thing and why we even call it that when it starts with a thread beginning in 1x22 with John throwing off Azazel to save Dean, and ends up with me yelling at my screen when a tan-coat-wearing brainwashed dude answering to a heaven-like organisation is waving a gun at some random hunter whose only crime is being adorable and loosely romantically connected to Sam, and declaring it Prime Destiel Subtext.

This is the wire tangle in my brain that explains it :P 

Details under the cut with the image above just so you can visualise all the bits of string, I guess, unless you can read my handwriting (on a browser, anyway, you can click the image to get it in a pop out, then right click, view in a new window, and view it in life size, and I used a LARGE sketchbook for it so life size is big ass spaghetti ramblings), in which case you get a prize. 

## Act One:

  * **1x22 -** John overcomes Azazel possession to save Dean
    * This is repeated with a better father figure in
  * **5x01 -**  Bobby breaks possession to save Dean
    * This is direct start of season to end of season foreshadowing for 
  * **5x22 -**  Sam overcomes Lucifer’s possession because of Dean 
    * A final repeat of it in this direct thread is in
  * **7x23 -**  Bobby overcomes  _possessing_  the maid so as not to kill Sam
    * This starts with an act of obvious parental love (all other judgements about John put aside for now) that John would break the most terrifying possession and biggest stakes the show had ever seen at that point for Dean’s sake. This is the theme here for the Kripke era uses of it. Bobby was tied into this in 5x01 because he is the replacement father figure and to show he is equal to this love. He does it for Sam too, in Gamble era, which is the only notable moment of paralleling this I can think of, when it comes to following a thread of subtext. I think it was a pretty final conclusion, allowed Bobby to do it for both his boys (setting aside a good cry about that) and wrapped this all up pretty conclusively for what this was ever meant to do. 
    * The final Bobby instance off in Gamble era shows the shifting themes from external evil and possession as a thing done by a totally separate thing, to loss of control, internal evil and darkness, and transformation to evil (4x21 where Sam beats Dean down while totally lost to demon blood and Ruby’s manipulation would be the obvious “crypt scene” of this time, but it is not framed this way, with no strong emphasis on the same gooey “I know you’re in there” sentiment - Dean assumes Sam has become a monster, is lost to him, and tells him something echoing what John once said to Sam about leaving and never coming back, so emotionally it has no real overlap with what these scenes are being used for, namely to convey the love between the people who are possessed and attacked)



## Act Two:

  * **8x10 -**  Cas kills Samandiriel while mind controlled
    * 8x11 - Gilda controlled by the book & Charlie saves her from control
    * 8x16 - small parallels with the staging and shifting loyalties with Artemis and Prometheus
    * ^ these both add romantic subtext through mirrors before the Big Day to help change its tone
  * **8x17 - CRYPT SCENE:**  Cas breaks through brainwashing to not kill Dean
    * “What broke the connection?” is left hanging while being bloody obvious
    * 9x04 - Robbie continues throwing in small scale mirrors, this time showing that sibling and other platonic relationships have no effect on a “I know you’re in there” which is becoming a key phrase.
    * 9x17 - confirms Henry only feels like Josie is a sibling, adding the 8x12 “I know you’re in there” to this list definitively.
    * Cas’s arc carries on relying on all this in the background as it builds up to
  * **9x22 -**  low-key reverse crypt scene with Hannah echoing Naomi to ask Cas to choose between Heaven and Dean. He is NOT brainwashed, so struggles probably more with finding a way to have his cake and eat it, before admitting defeat that he “can’t” kill Dean. Especially not in sound mind. 
    * This answers the “what broke the connection” question from the last crypt scene by showing how important Dean is in a different set up, and leads into the 9x22/23 “he’s in love… with humanity” “- all for Dean Winchester” thing, confirming with words some more of this unspoken subtext.
    * This of course is over Dean with the Mark causing problems, and everything’s swinging around to this as the main problem, with Dean succumbing seemingly to his  _inner darkness_  but of course it’s a literal  _external darkness_ affecting him, though on a deep, intrinsic level that’s filtered through his own personality and makes it hell to have a solid answer on what what Dean and what was the Mark.
    * Notably, Dean just takes a swing at Sam with a hammer, and Cas swoops in and saves Sam, and they cure him together, invoking no tropes from this thread whatsoever as Cas and Dean pointedly never look at each other once while Dean is a demon, and Dean never says anything to Cas. This plays off a thread of Cas restraining Dean in 9x23, 10x03, and finally 10x22 in the same way, with a 3rd time failure to control him, leading TO the crypt scene reversal, but I don’t think is properly connected.
    * While Dean is succumbing to the Darkness, the Colette Parallel comes into play, which strictly speaking is entirely other fuckery in the Destiel subtext, but dips in to converge on
    * 10x13 - parallel in the MotW with the trenchcoat wearing wife talking her murder-rampaging ghost husband into peace, right before Cain returns, and is a crypt scene direct mirror
  * **10x22 - REVERSE CRYPT SCENE:** directly parallels the original, with the same director, flipped participants but nearly identical choreography (and this is where you play the Thomas J Wright card and point at the Dark Angel episode with the exact same staging of the end of the fight in similar circumstances). Dean manages to break out of the darkness fugue state just enough to  _not_ kill Cas, and to continue to defy Cain’s prophecy. 
    * Literally textbook what everyone had been predicting a “reverse” crypt scene would be since Dean was affected with said external/internal darkness issue



## Act Three:

    * 11x03 - smol crypt scene parallel with Cas controlled, riffing off 10x22 for the theme of Cas’s lasting emotional damage from this
      * Cas ends up possessed by Lucifer as a result
      * 11x18 Cas does not throw off the possession
        * this does however parallel 6x20 in the confrontation style
        * And ends a rule of three on wandering into someone’s head and saving them, PLATONICALLY, from 8x08 (Sam and Fred Jones), 9x10 (Crowley and Sam) and here (Crowley and Cas)
      * He has his Swan Song moment to show how much he loves Sam in 11x14, swapping right back to the classic “I am possessed by Lucifer but do not want to kill you” model (hence these more and more nested bullet points as we detour from The Point, but on the diagram, one long wobbly arrow back up to the top to show it is ALL STILL CONNECTED)
    * 11x16 - Incidentally Robbie’s on his way out and sticks in one more failed brotherly “I know you’re in there” just to make a point I guess, while they’re working on new and better ways to resolve everything that are no longer like the past (represented by Bobby, and another arrow up to 5x01/7x23, just for him being around reminding us)
    * Meanwhile this all follows in the background of The Point, dealing with Dean’s internal/external Darkness problem, now manifest as Amara. Which leads us to the first break in the absolute rule of possession/internal darkness as he confronts his darkness externally with Cas absent from the action entirely in
  * **11x21 - REVERSE REVERSE CRYPT SCENE:**  “Where are your thoughts?” Amara asks, realising her sway on Dean has all gone, and Dean is thinking of saving Cas, acting as decoy to rescue Lucifer - and by Lucifer, he means Cas. Notably, this is part of the TJW directing fuckery, and he’s not done yet. 
    * Amara also uses the image of a bloody beaten Cas (echoing the haunting of a similar Cas as a result of 10x22 to Dean in 10x23) to motivate Dean to do as she wants in the first part. 
    * Cas’s absence and the lack of interaction between them, by this point, is not essential for thematic Crypt scene parallels, especially as at this point Amara is still a romantic rival, subtextually, and clearly entangled in that love triangle, via the visual subtext of the episode, with her using Dean and Cas’s personal connection to communicate with Dean.
    * The Amara connection breaks, and is revealed to have been completely platonic in her heart after all, in 
    * 11x23 - Swan Song again! Dean goes and breaks up the cosmic sibling row on a scale one huge step above Michael and Lucifer, this time bloodlessly, this time about resolving the conflict peacefully, and with no heightened proving love drama except the hugs in the graveyard between Sam and Dean and Dean and Cas and whatever THEY tell us. It extracts the original Point of 5x22 and finally resolves it. 
    * At this point there are now clearly 2 completely distinct branches of this subtext; the Swan Song parallels on one side and the Crypt Scenes ones on the other - the heightened love-proving drama has two completely distinct languages born from the same point. 11x21 resolves one, 11x23 the other.



## Act Four:

(I didn’t separate them on the diagram, because I think it stopped *just* following on from itself and became more of a fractal in season 11, but you know what, for the sake of having a clear Dabb era section… Here, it fractals out from the previous versions and I was half-tempted to glue these all onto much earlier episodes, but went with a chronological layout. None of these remotely resemble the others OR the original crypt scene, and yet they ALL tripped my radar for the same train of thought…)

  * **12x02 -**  going RIGHT back to the start, Mary parallels 1x22 with the ghost possession and not wanting to kill Dean. Again, platonic, and in the model of the Swan Song series of subtext, which 11x14 showed the pattern is still around and clearer than ever.
  * **12x10 -**  TJW is at it again. Paralleing the 9x22 iteration, Ishim asks Cas to choose between himself and Dean. When the choice is too obvious, it swaps to paralleling 10x22 with the choreography and obvious importance to show Cas’s state of mind by using the similar shots of Cas feeling defeated and relating to Dean being in a POSITION to kill him. Of course this also, like 11x21, uses an externalised evil to make it all happen, lightening the direct interpersonal trauma, and obviously Dean chooses not to kill Cas as well when faced with the choice.
    * **12x12 -**  Cas again hurt, working with 12x10 for Cas’s arc, as they were a set of episodes. The dialogue including an “I love you” finally includes the infamous dropped line from 8x17′s crypt scene, in a broadly applicable family setting, but also with room to wonder how much Cas meant it about Dean first, then everyone else. It’s at least an answer to 8x17. And “What broke the connection” - thematically it does not, however, look anything like a crypt scene, and yet EMOTIONALLY overlaps so much I can’t not mention it. Hence my thoughts about this thread becoming fractals of itself.
  * **12x17 -**  Mick, an external (12x10, 11x23), brainwashed (8x17) threat, heavily mirroring Cas in his coat, threatens Eileen because the Code demands he kill her as punishment (9x22), and Sam talks him down into questioning his “Code” enough to allow them to escape. Sam and Eileen are coded as potential maybe one day love interests, because of Robbie fucking Thompson back in season 11, and general adorableness and laser focus on their interactions in this episode. Dean is present but Sam handles it because he has the stake in Eileen.
    * Semi-unrelated but Mick then goes on to die for “The original Mission” in almost identical form to Naomi (8x23), Gadreel (9x23) and Metatron (11x21), going out as he lived: one heck of a parallel to angels and their loyalty to Heaven… with Dr Hess as a Naomi parallel herself, making this emotionally pretty much an 8x17 Cas moment for Mick himself, flipping around the point of crypt scenes instead of revealing how he CARES as a proof of love (unless he really did fall in love with Sam while bonding as nerd-soulmates) but instead seems mostly to be platonically, as a moment of personal growth for him on this “original mission” thread instead. Of course, angels returning to the ideals of the “original mission” become Cas-aligned for however long they last while back on the good guys table… 
    * Which I just like because it’s a double Crypt Scene parallel for both the romantic side and the threat, but they have fuck all to do with each other in that respect, this has just become so ridiculously layered you can’t walk into a bar without having to talk down a mind-controlled acquaintance, and at which point I stopped, looking hard at Mick and was like, what the fuck this started with John and Azazel and Dean. 



[Originally posted by sebastianxtan](https://tmblr.co/ZW8LFu1aFYmql)

* * *

Oh wow, thanks for bringing this back up in a reblog… I’d like to add:

  * 12x22 the Swan Song parallels (which 12x03 I assume was foreshadowing all along with the spookily mirrored visual symmetry) scoop up a handful more of extremely obvious key Winchester Family imagery (Dean in the chair like John from the Pilot, Sam in his crib, and the whole Heaven memory from 5x16 with Mary) and Dean needs to make Mary see him, like with Sam in 5x22 it’s resolved by SEEING and clarity on their relationship.
    * The Naomi-like parallels in the way Toni’s brainwashing was presented visually, which continues to add to the brainwashing Heaven parallels and begins to blur the mind control imagery across canon since this was a family parallel… Unless…
      * In the actual conditions of the brainwashy room Mary was kept in, her relationship with Ketch comes to a head aside from the murdery part, and we get a *romantic* (i.e. not really at all but he’s obsessed with her and she thought he would probably be a good 1 time hook up and made a mistake about how clingy it would make him) crypt scene parallel where Mary is struggling for control and it’s a very dark version of it where she’s seeking death, hoping Ketch will kill her, and after multiple times in the season where the option of suicide was presented to her, he prevents her from killing herself but insists the mind control will help, and later, of course, has her placidly helping, ready for the later saving in the parallel with Dean - that shitty relationship wasn’t strong enough to break the control, but her strong family bonds ARE.
  * Cas also seemingly gets controlled by Jack in 12x19 with a lot of similar language to Heaven’s purpose but switched to Jack. Currently unresolved although I do wonder if all that stuff about Mick, who paralleled Cas, was another coded warning not so much of mindsets but of these themes appearing in the text and the dangers of Heaven-like extreme beliefs and their comfort/control.
    * This is paralleled to the Twig People in 12x20 but only to a codependency mirror, despite Max’s attempts to differentiate I/we. It was another dark mirror. Possibly because the end of season 12 was all building up to go into 13 where it might be resolved.



I also recently got really into the want/need distinction that these parallels involve, talking about 12x22

> Not actually sure I saw anyone actually analysing the “need”s in this speech before and don’t let me get into the web of parallels between what I generally refer to as the Crypt Scene/Swan Song parallels for their most notable moments… Gah :P   
> After months of musing on it since around 12x17 (which I think was the final straw for me :P) I think I’ve decided one side is revelations about feelings and the other is affirming bonds which were always there but tested… the UNCERTAINTY is the difference because no one would doubt that there ARE bonds of love between the Winchesters, they just heap great big piles of issues on top of it, while it’s more about reciprocation of feelings in the bundle of nonsense I’ve labelled crypt scenes… But I guess to say, that it’s again about need/want but in a different way where the family bonds are testing need and the others are testing want.

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167447158973/i-just-realized-after-sam-tells-the-kid-about-how>

I’m just collecting these things in one place again. :D

* * *

 

> **[sophava](https://sophava.tumblr.com/)**  asked:
> 
> I'm thinking about Dean's line a few episodes ago "All I see when I look at [Jack] is everything we've lost". But we all know he's referring to Cas, and the one who's in the most pain about that is Dean. Maybe it's not Dean-hiding-behind-Sam about his love for Cas, but just Dean referring to himself with the royal "we". Then the "I love you. I love you all" from last season makes more sense!

* * *

Pffthahaha :P 

I think Dean using “we” to mean “i” whether it’s pretentious or not is basically the implication in a lot of this. I don’t actually think it’s particularly subtext-y because it’s been a thread for a long time, including with textual call-outs. I bet it got used a lot before, but 11x23 in the beer run scene where Dean is particularly weasely about his feelings seems to be the thematic kick off for season 12:

> DEAN:  
> You know, sometimes me and Sam have got so much going on that…we forget about everyone else.
> 
> CAS:  
> Well, you do live exciting lives.
> 
> DEAN: [Chuckles]  
> Yeah, that’s one word for it.  
> But you’re always there, you know?  
> You’re the best friend we’ve ever had.  
> You’re our brother, Cas. I want you to know that.
> 
> CAS:  
> Thank you.

There’s nothing in that that isn’t true but there’s also nothing which isn’t extreeemely calculated use of words to get Cas back on track without betraying any personal feelings. There’s no emotional clarification except a best friends > brother escalation, but it’s all “we” and he’s speaking on behalf of himself and Sam. And of course he manufactured the entire thing where Crowley is wandering around the Bunker blatantly betraying that it’s stocked with more than they could drink before the end of the universe, so he’s only driving out with Cas because he wants to talk to him. 

And then season 12 had a LOT about clarifying I and we, but the best example was the little fight the Banes twins had going because it came right after 12x19, and was the textual call out which explains that all the i/we stuff in the previous episodes isn’t just something we’re randomly picking up on and talking about but an intentional part of the narrative that we SHOULD be focussing on:

> ALICIA:   
> Yeah, sorry to um…Uh, Mary gave me a couple different numbers to reach her, and we thought –  
>   
> Max loudly interrupts Alicia to make a point that this is not his idea.  
>   
> MAX:   
> No. No. Mnh-mnh.  
>   
> Alicia looks exasperated.  
>   
> ALICIA:   
> I thought Mary would be down to help. 

And then this season the first 6 episodes artfully whittled down Dean’s words into forcing him to make this clarification and say for himself that it was about Cas - he hasn’t talked TO Cas about it, but narratively he moved on quite a ways while Cas was dead, through this  _mire_ of not being able to talk specifically about Cas… 

I really don’t peddle in stuff to come or think something like this - a subtextual arc about how they talk to each other, even if it made a huge jump of progress in its relative speed - might not be something to happen immediately. I mean at this pace, it might be another end of season pay off, since it went 11x23, 11x19/20, and then moved too fast between 13x01>6 when Dean could say to Sam yes his mood had changed because Cas was back… Because Mary then got to swing around to be a priority after we dealt with all the immediate Cas stuff that needed to be done, and they can pick that back up basically whenever they please now, just that the progress bar HAS moved on a bit… So I don’t wanna say ANYTHING like when Dean n Cas talk next they SHOULD talk in a way which is about how Dean actually, personally feels about Cas… He never managed it in 13x06, he just wasn’t restrained about having Cas back, while avoiding any I/we scenario dialogue about them… :P

But yeah, because he got more specific in 13x03 I think it helps clarify a LOT of scenes about himself and Cas - about things where he ducked behind careful language like “we” and “our” because like the “want” and “need” thing is really really in focus all of a sudden, the language that’s been separating them since the crypt scene has been critiqued like for THREE SEASONS or something, but it’s getting to a point where Dean’s behaviour is making his past behaviour LOOK different, because he was forced into the distinction that he and Sam felt differently about Cas. 

It’s pretty epic progress, but epic like a glacier rolling across the landscape :P

[filed for relevance to do with language]

* * *

 

Circa 13x18/13x19:   
  
This theme is definitely theme-ing, since we got 2 reverse crypt scenes in 13x19 as well - the “I don’t know you and you’re not even possessed” proof of rule with Bernard and Dean fighting, and Sam’s appeal to Rowena when he was about to get murdered. Both of them Yockey-flavoured takes on the thing, while Buckleming just straight up quoting the original (With Sam saying "We need you, I need you" to Gabriel) is their flavour of subtlety :P 

* * *

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> That amazing gifset you reblogged of the parallel between Sam praying to Castiel and Sam praying to Jack, well, it's a fucking awesome gifset, but my eyes were caught by Sam's "We need you. We need you." So if Jack's "I love you. I love all of you." parallels Cas's line in s12, is the Sam line there to contrast Dean in the crypt scene, "We need you. I need you."?

* * *

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/174161556140/waywardsam-701-1323>

God, you know, they so legitimately needed him in like, an actual real, pls help us not get murdered right this second, no brainwashy nonsense or begging you to change your mind or ANYTHING, that I didn’t even clock that Sam SAID “need” here because it was an actual natural part of dialogue :P Like, yes, your AUncle is murdering us pls help, no ulterior motive, no emotional manipulation, I just don’t want us to die…

Not that the stakes have been lower in other “need” scenes like the crypt scene, but Jack wasn’t already there, being a part of the problem, you know?

Anyway, yeah. If the repetition was scripted then it’s absolutely a need vs want demonstrator that need isn’t always bad, if you say what you MEAN and this is the absolute truth here. In the crypt scene the language was changed from “love” to “need” and the narrative later began calling out Dean in the sense that he has to clarify his feelings and not cause Cas further want vs need harm by not being clear and leaving Cas uncertain of how Dean feels about him. 

10x19 is the start of that for me, in the sense that the language imprecision is directly called out by Dean’s own subconscious, making it clear this is a lesson he needs to apply in his life. Ongoing moments of him saying “need” instead of “want” get really obvious in that light, when mixed with Cas’s arc of uncertainty about belonging, also textually stated in a Berens episode, and since Dabb era Berens has had one of the top writer slots for big mytharc/emotional episodes, so his themes go :P There’s been a lot of poking at this lately for some reason ;) 

Anyways. I like the idea of Sam having an honest “crypt scene” parallel which shows the language subversion by dint of it being completely genuinely said, but also not the same pattern of words we’ve been seeing, and instead remains plural because Sam is speaking for the team, and in defence of his family, and in a sense has nothing to prove with Jack, at least not that the next few minutes of their lives won’t do just as well. He doesn’t need to manipulate him into helping because he will, he doesn’t need to prove anything because the level of trust and care is mostly proven, and he’s had faith in Jack since day 1. There’s no PERSONAL thing to yank on that doesn’t equally apply to Dean and Cas, because as Rowena said, all 3 of them have a fatherly connection to Jack. The relationship clarification to come is all about Lucifer having always been a monster and eliminating him from the race, and then the personal escalation between Sam and Jack is because they had been set up since the first few episodes as closer and Sam spending more time on Jack and he was a Sam-connected character so it was only right and fair to make their personal story resolve as the end of the season’s big thing, and just an added bonus that meant we got to leave poor old Cas to helplessly lose Dean in front of his eyes to his no1 personal nightmare scenario :P

Anyways. Good catch :D

* * *

From 14x09:

 

This is just CRUEL to make Garth be like “I’m sorryyyyy” as he charges at Sam.

-

LOL THIS IS A CRYPT SCENE. He’s in Garth’s head!

“You don’t have to do this!” “You can fight this, Garth!”

-

Me, staring at my mess of red string connecting crypt scenes: How did I get to Garth wolfing out while shouting apologies at Sam and Sam begging him to stop when this all started with Dean n Cas fighting over a lump of rock 6 seasons ago

-

Oh thank god they ended it with Sam vulcan neck pinching Garth to sleep after Jack took a rolling tackle at him and Garth ends up still controlled and shoved in the back of the car for later problems.

We’ll file this under the failures section between bros and move on though I won’t deny Berens had me in a cold sweat that I was going to have to throw years of work out because Sam would grab Mr Fizzles out of Garth’s pocket and soothe him back to himself :P

-

Mr Fizzles x Garth as the Destiel parallel of the year


	7. “What, are you gonna look up more anime, or are you strictly into Dick now?”

##  [“What, are you gonna look up more anime, or are you strictly into Dick now?”](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/158682173693/what-are-you-gonna-look-up-more-anime-or-are)

## A lengthy exploration of Dean Winchester as a consistently queer character, thank to themes he embodies with his core characterisation of occupying both sides of binary traits.

(aka the reason why I lazily shove random things into my “[Dean vs cake](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Dean-vs-cake)” tag with no explanation, written out while on a 8hr train journey)

The writing of Dean is of a character split between endless examples of duality, moments of characterisation which have stark opposites (either generally accepted or made up into a false dichotomy by the show) where he appears to embody elements of both at all times. Generally, the less-expected or pleasant part is something he resists admitting liking or labelling himself as.

He may be described as a killer while being shown to be the most compassionate character by his actions in the same episode; his projection of himself as a dumb grunt has been so successful that we have to scrape up lists of dozens of examples to prove his intelligence in arguments, despite one of the most-used examples being in only the fourth episode but is cited all the time to prove he’s not the stupid brother in contrast to Sam’s college-educated introduction leaving a lasting impression there; a lesser example of Dean wobbling between sides of a duality includes his strict favouritism of pie being shown in stark contrast to cake as if he must surely hate it, having declared himself for pie; and of course his frequently shown interest in women is contrasted with extremely consistent queer subtext implying that Dean is attracted to men as well.

This last duality seems to be the most persistently hard to reconcile (meanwhile Dean was happily eating croissookies by the middle of season 10 after getting over his problem with cake). Despite the common interpretation of Dean as a bisexual character with numerous textual moments to back up the reading, moments of him expressing his interest in women are sometimes seen as the writing trying to deny the queer side of his character outright, even by some of the same people making this interpretation as we struggle with text and intent over subtext and implication and how deliberate the suggestion is. While to others the existence of his attraction to women is more than enough to prove definitively that Dean is a straight character and any attempt to read queer subtext into his story is inaccurate, despite an entire catalogue of examples and analysis by those who make the reading across the entire length of the show to date. A regular argument that Dean can’t be bi is for the person denying it to attach dozens of gifs of Dean blatantly expressing/exercising his interest in women as if this definitively proves it, despite only being one side of the  _both ways_  he’s suggested to swing.

A similar state of disbelief exists for real life bisexual people or those with similar orientations, with a mentality that they should either pick a side or are really one thing or the other, depending on their most obviously expressed orientation/gender, usually based on their current partner or obvious behavioural cues (especially ones society favours or would find easiest to read). Reading a fictional character who can’t talk for himself to answer it, who can only continue to be written and portrayed on screen following various patterns, and going through storylines which may or may not answer anything, of course makes it all the more impossible to reach a definitive reading, as it is entirely subjective and down to the viewer and how they understand what they see on screen. Dean being written with all this duality in his behaviour can lead to extremely contradictory readings, which is also a smaller symptom of the show’s broad appeal playing successfully to multiple audiences.

Of course people can like a varied selection of music or dessert treats in real life and it is generally considered a mark of a balanced and well-rounded individual to cultivate varied tastes in things. No one trying a croissookie for the first time should be a stunning moment of character development. In storytelling, associations and traits are made easily known by small details with larger social or tropey coding in order to quickly get to know them, and subconsciously access a wealth of implications about how else they might act/feel or their backstory. Characters are defined by often seemingly meaningless distinctions which make it difficult to imagine something perceived as an opposite trait to it, as something the character could also occupy. The trait is used as a shorthand to convey a great deal about the character, from which assumptions can be made about the rest of their personality, and it allows for false binaries where it makes understanding a character confusing when they’re shown enjoying something they previously seemed to hate; with a rigid definition to help us understand them to start with, the character acting in a contrary way becomes suspicious, breaks immersion, or requires analysis to work out why they’d change their behaviour, as we are aware they are a fictional construct and need to be explained and interpreted, and that someone is creating it all deliberately to some end for our entertainment. 

Dean is a controversial character to define in part due to his projected façades he creates either for the job or for personal and emotional security, including façades he keeps for Sam’s benefit and therefore will be persistently shown on screen due to their interaction in every single episode. Many of the episodes about their childhood expose these vulnerabilities by showing the characters before their modern day dynamic was fully established (3x08 especially as it had so much of them interacting as kids), or by exposing that there is a great deal Sam doesn’t know about the ways in which Dean has protected him from harsh truths about their upbringing and father (9x07 springs to mind there and “the story became the story” to explain how Sam ended up never knowing certain things about Dean’s childhood or the way John was as a parent to him). 10x12 and 12x11 explored Dean returning to a childlike or innocent state, further revealing the ways in which he creates – or rather, curates – his seemingly generic surface personality for Sam’s benefit. 

By changing the rules of how Dean is written they can expose him having different tastes or behaving in entirely different ways which betray the gruff and macho exterior for what it is - a part of Dean but by far not the  _only_  part. 10x12 showed Dean enjoying cake and Taylor Swift while briefly in a teenage body - the joke being that his mind remained entirely intact to his current age. At the end of the episode Dean enjoys Taylor Swift on the radio and then starts eating croissookies or wanting cake in later episodes. 12x11 again makes Dean vulnerable in front of Sam and almost the first thing he does as a sign he’s no longer remembering to project for Sam, is admit to liking Dory and therefore watching Disney movies, betraying yet another part of his tough exterior which something like catching a Pixar movie on the down low would be entirely opposite to the personality he wants to project. 

(As an aside I’ve seen wank recently that the performing Dean meta is because people want to get rid of Dean’s surface layer entirely and entirely remove this part of his personality, which is a misunderstanding that of course it’s a part of Dean’s personality but he would be happier and more well-balanced if he would own to the other parts. Moments like admitting he likes chick flicks are actual genuine huge progress to unravelling this persona and have not drastically changed who Dean is - only allowed Sam to go from a suspicious outsider to someone on the inside where he and Dean now  _share_  the knowledge Dean likes chick flicks openly and without aggression or deflection, meaning they can be happier and more comfortable. When they actually watch a chick flick together with Jody in 12x06 Dean can’t exactly complain about doing it and Sam is utterly comfortable teasing Dean to Jody because it’s no longer hostile territory… Obviously that’s an ideal way to resolve all their other issues without making some weird hypothesis that now Dean has to do nothing but watch chick flicks and cry about them in his down time since this admission… He can just be more comfortable embracing both sides of the duality of his interest in movies - the random box of socially acceptable stuff to Dean’s eyes, and the stuff that he’d be embarrassed to admit liking for reasons rooted in the toxic masculinity that informs a lot of his shell.)

Anyway, unpacking a balanced understanding of Dean’s personality is difficult (and finding things people agree on even about what the surface layer means or is for), as many things he says or does will be taken as fact, and therefore meant to convey the entire understanding we should have about Dean, meaning every action or statement contrary to the initial interpretation becomes bad data that is easily discarded, or one off moments that lend no greater understanding to his character. This is not helped by the multitude of writers who have contributed to his creation, throwing in disruptions or unexpected approaches to his portrayal which to some may seem too far to credit even for such a multifaceted character (and of course what it is and who it bothers among the various factions caused by these readings change depending on the moment, as different concerns about his characterisation arise… But seriously can we all agree that Dean apparently having never even heard of  _It’s a Wonderful Life_  even through pop culture soak (which is 90% of his personality) in 9x03 is clearly a step too far). 

Differentiating what seems like a poorly considered character beat from intentionally contradictory portrayals of his behaviour, that can be reasoned out or understood for what they were attempting to convey more in tune with the wider picture, does not always happen smoothly. This leads to interpretations of Dean that can be extremely hostile to each other and seem to discuss starkly different characters as certain readings take their place in the wider story as they interpret it and the intentionally ambiguous writing of the show fosters many layers and different interpretations throughout. The reading of Dean as a queer character or not is only the most contentious of these entirely different narratives people find in the story.

Examining the different presentations of Dean and his sexuality can be an enormous task with twelve seasons of discussion and imagery, metaphor and both textual and subtextual displays of interest Dean expresses that would need to be analysed (not always to the obvious gender when assuming Dean is textually portrayed as heterosexual and subtextually bisexual – for example in 8x13 Dean has his humorous misunderstanding with Aaron, who he calls his “gay thing” rather fondly to Sam, and takes absolutely no pains to establish to anyone that he wouldn’t have been interested after being caught out by and unable to lie about his interest in a proposition that Aaron had expected to only scare him off). 

Setting aside the smaller episode to episode instances which lend to a bigger picture but are hard to discuss to get the sense of a larger narrative (as there’s too many, and each one would need to be described), I’m just going to go for a few big obvious examples which can be used to describe Dean in relation to this framed binary of interest one way or the other by briefly examining some of the more prominent relationships Dean has that I think represent both sides of his interest in men and women. 

Buried in the subtext of the show since season 9 or 10, Dean ended up having a physical relationship during a brief “summer of love” with Crowley, since then and to date portrayed clearly as a relationship and them as exes, with varying amounts of fondness, embarrassment and knowing innuendo about their activities and history. It’s about as close to textual as any relationship Dean’s had with a male character and there’s now 3 seasons of content between 9x11 and 12x15 relating to it.

There is also Dean’s most popularly shipped and most firmly subtextually embedded but constant relationship with Cas - waffling about angels aside, a male bodied and identifying character. The evidence for the queer subtext of their relationship dates back to Cas’s arrival in the fourth season. Narratively, as a clear example, being played against Ruby, and the way that relationship with Sam was used in the story. Though Anna is introduced to have Dean’s relationship to the divine directly paralleled to Sam’s relationship to the demonic, with a 2 episode romance arc to allow a parallel of both brothers hooking up with their respective sides, Cas and Ruby play as narrative foils to their Winchester and the other’s relationship all season, and to greater emotional and plot effect than Anna, whose personal relationship to Dean is non-existent after she becomes an angel again. Dean and Cas continue to have romantic subtext for the entire time Cas is on the show (and even while he was supposedly written off and dead).

Dean’s longest lasting romantic relationship on the show (with most flings being the “girl of the week” in Dean’s words) was with Lisa, between seasons three (where she was used to demonstrate the normal life he’d never get but suddenly really regretted never having and was acutely aware of missing) and six (where after the apocalypse they end up together as a year break from hunting for Dean), ending in non-fatal tragedy after a mutually acknowledged break up earlier in the season, after which she plays no further part in the story. 

His sexual and romantic history with Lisa does not invalidate his romantic connection to Cas, nor his sexual history with Crowley (though of course it has more textual grounding even than his fling with Crowley hardly being a secret or subtle or “Destiel” having been name-dropped in the show). Likewise, the relationships with Cas and Crowley don’t invalidate the time he spent with Lisa as a meaningful and fully desired part of his life. (And of course Dean continued sleeping with women after and  _during_  his elopement with Crowley…) All of these elements exist within the story and never ask you to choose between them. Even the Crowley and Castiel parts complement each other, taking the form of Dean in a love triangle of sorts with the demon and angel on his shoulders, again another binary that Dean is in the middle of, between angel and demon, Heaven and Hell, the dynamic of which reliably plays out since season nine when Crowley’s seduction and muscling into their previously established romantic subtext began.

Though these are the eye-catching examples of relationships as a demonstration of Dean’s ability to share his affection, of course looking deeper reveals that Dean has been a queer coded character since the start, and no examples of long relationship arcs would be necessary to argue that Dean’s bisexuality exists in the subtext, even just in the way the show discusses and frames his character (and some people do identify with him in  _general_ as a bisexual character, without caring about ships but rather through his experiences and the way he’s written). Dean just has a relatable state of existence that specifically seems to describe him as bisexual, with general queer coding subtext. 

So as a starting point (and I’m not going to go season by season because one: we’ve been there done that and B: I’m only stuck on trains for 10 hours, I can’t elaborate on the bi Dean subtext in  _every_  season in detail), the first season plays Dean thematically against Sam’s psychic abilities (that arc more traditionally played as a queer metaphor with lines such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” uttered about Sam’s powers – from Dean, of course). Dean meanwhile is presented as feeling like a freak and outsider himself with a sense of estrangement and otherness from society which plays as an easy metaphor for a queer character (1x06 overtly having his feelings described this way; 1x08 also has him expressing discomfort about suburbia and normal life, for example). This backdrop of the sort of framing of his character is assisted with moments of flirtation with male characters (in very specific contexts which leave room to argue it’s one thing or another and would make up the surface reading, such as Dean feeling threatened and flirting to deflect - the two off the top of my head are the saucy comments to police in 1x01 and 1x12, and snark-complimenting the random (later revealed to be evil) villager in 1x11); presenting Dean’s general insecurity with gender and sexuality, a running theme that gets increasingly explored as time goes by but the roots of which are especially visible with hindsight; and ambiguously presented moments with extremely suggestive implications (for example Dean’s missing hour in the bathroom in 1x15 immediately after what seems to be a flirtatious wink past Sam to some of the people playing pool behind him - mostly men, of course). Dean’s immersion in the world of hunting, itself in general a culture presented with a metaphorical suggestion relating it to queer culture despite its overt hypermasculine and assumed conservative social structure (hand in hand with monsters sharing this metaphor), is another sense of coding Dean as belonging to a culture within but separate from the normative culture, and the fact he embraces it in a way Sam doesn’t in season 1.

Played in contrast to Sam, it’s an interesting picture. Sam is given a starting point with an attempt at building a “normal” life which of course includes a girlfriend he intends to marry and one day hopefully have a family with. Though this is all ripped away from him in the first episode, Sam still wishes for a normal life, and at several points consistently throughout the show expresses this interest and the idea that he still would dream for it as his ideal life; that he only continues hunting because it’s the family business and his brother is still in it, for example, as his line in season 10/11 when bringing it up, and in season 12 Mary wins him over to the BMoL’s world without monsters pitch with a reminder of what a normal life might be for him now. 

Dean meanwhile expresses that the normal life is not for him many times, and when he attempts to have it with Lisa, as the one example of him living as a civilian since he was four years old, it’s a compromise for his life taking him away from hunting and expressed as such, while Sam generally cuts himself entirely off from their world and can live as and imagine himself being a civilian, having a history of running away as a child, a break for freedom at college, and another attempt as an adult when he ran out of family to continue the family business with between season 7 & 8. 

Unlike Sam’s attempts to leave the life behind, Dean is shown still using the symbols of that culture, warding the house, laying down salt, and keeping a gun and holy water under his bed, that last image of which the montage at the start of season six ends with, showing vividly how his bed and normal life still has the world of hunting and monsters under it. This life quickly draws him back in with the return of Sam from the dead and back into his life, and he tries to exist in a half-in half-out state until various disasters show the problem with their set up, as Dean’s connection to this other culture upsets the balance of the home life he had with Lisa. This also is shown as a tragedy and a negative reflection on Sam and Dean’s, that they couldn’t make the compromise work. 

Similarly one of the darkest moments in the brothers’ relationship is when they pick each other over Sam’s once hopeful way out and chance at a normal life on the other side of all their eight seasons of accumulated trauma, Amelia (and Riot the dog), and Dean’s (of course ambiguously coded) relationship with Benny, and it seems awful that they’ve given up so much and chosen such an extreme, clearly over their own happiness and desires, because of their obligation towards each other and their job. In the example of 8x10, Sam gives up total normality while Dean gives up an emotional connection within their world.

On the surface the fact both Sam and Dean are disrupted out of normal life, especially by each other’s presence, and would continue hunting because of the other, seems an identical conflict of interests between them and a normal life. But their actual attitudes towards it are again presented as opposite. Dean expresses many times that he sees no end to hunting for him, and that he would happily die doing it; later attempts to suggest possible endgames include possibilities of considerably more settled lifestyles still within the hunting culture, again for Dean a hybrid life where he may occupy two ends of a spectrum simultaneously, and that he might be allowed to emotionally settle while still being able to identify as a hunter and to be a part of their world. 

Sam might also wonder about settling down with someone in the life as a possibility he never seemed to consider until 11x04, but it comes with precisely none of this baggage, connected instead to different arcs in Sam’s development. Sam’s interest in the normal life comes with assumed and unchallenged heteronormativity, and the desire to have an eventual wife is implicit (while for Dean since season 10 all his discussion of an endgame has repeatedly used gender neutral phrasing that he may settle down with someone). Sam is also shown with few long-term love interests, the only notable positive one since Jess being Amelia (Ruby was never going to be a settling down white picket fence thing, but again, different story being told over there where Sam has no queer subtext but other struggles). Again in (or, before) season 8 he settled down with the full intention to leave the hunting world behind, including letting go of the burden of following leads from the newspapers that would have taken him onto a case, and ditching their phones instead of at least putting himself on standby in case Kevin or someone else got in contact needing their help. Mary’s return in season 12 contrasts this all the more by showing even after she was married and settled and had already had Dean, the prospect of a hunt could still tempt her out of the house. In many ways Mary’s outlook on life and hunting has been paralleled more closely to Dean’s and “a world without monsters” is antithetical to their true desires; that they will always be somewhat between worlds, while it is genuinely tempting to Sam to leave it all behind and get married.

Very little is made in the text of Sam’s interest in women in the sense of his interest being, well, interesting. He never makes sexual comments, rarely checks women out, and is rarely depicted wishing for casual sex, something he also extremely rarely engages in except for times when he’s been soulless or drinking demon blood, giving him clear and dramatic changes in his psyche. An incidental moment where he and Dean sign a virginity pledge in 9x08 leads to an accidental unbroken “virginity” until 11x04 for Sam (and he says he’s going to go research and sounds like he means it when he leaves and stumbles into his hook up, paralleled to Dean intentionally looking for a hook up but seeming to strike out after a bad night… or - well, that moment is itself ambiguous and had a ton of discussion of exactly what “mistakes” Dean made after blowing all out of proportion an attempt to hook up with a female hunter he already knew was never going to happen when he brought her up). Of course in 9x08 Dean breaks the same vow within the episode, as well as it being obvious to Sam he would, and the way it happens playing into a long thread of pointing out Dean’s interest in women and his varied tastes in porn (Chuck had never seen so much on one computer…). Dean’s sexuality has a much greater focus in general, whether it’s his interest in women or the subtextual coding of him as bisexual. Whether it’s subtextual or Dean openly discussing sex and being shown seeking it out, a fairly consistent discussion continues within the text about his sexuality. Showing his overt interest in women leads to a more general picture of all of Dean’s interests and contributes to an ongoing depiction and thematic discussion of Dean’s interests and desires.

And so to the chosen quote for the title – Sam’s fascinating challenge to Dean about his computer usage in 7x12, combining Dean’s stated interest in watching anime porn from 7x01, implied to be about female characters (based on the sound effects coming from his laptop in the only incident where he’s actually shown watching it and - ew) and the endless Dick jokes of season seven (“Who would choose to be called Dick?” Edgar wonders about him, hanging a lampshade on the season’s desire to just make as many Dick jokes as they could). Sam once again suggests there’s a binary – in this case because you can’t really do both at the same time for reasonable multi-tasking issues. Of course metaphorically it seems to be a jab that Dean has transitioned his interest in the heterosexually coded anime porn to a  _strict_  homosexual interest in “Dick” –  an innocuous jibe from Sam who has lived in close quarters with Dean for long enough to be fairly certain of his interest in women.

Still, it illustrates the binary that this sort of thought operates in: that even when Dean is shown and  _known_  to have a multifaceted range of interests, in this case literally coded as a metaphor for his sexuality rather than coding suggestive of it as well (like the cake/pie thing), it’s an either/or despite that we know he could reasonably want the laptop to do either (though not in this context as he genuinely did want to help with the monster of the week case which was an entirely other thing outside of the binary and not relevant - you know, until 10 minutes later Dean’s fangirling over Eliot Ness and rotating to check out a soldier in the street). The end of 7x12 shows Dean is still “into Dick”, continuing his research for the obsessive revenge mission as the last beat of the episode; Sam displays that he’s perfectly aware of how multifaceted Dean is years later in the season 12 episode where he gets to tease Dean for being “an animated Japanese erotica chick” - never mind that in that case it was a binary between “chick flick chick” and that, and riffing off the pilot episode’s “No chick flick moments” (establishing the first binary of stated text and implied subtext about Dean), at the end of season 11 Sam finally managed to get Dean to admit that he loved chick flicks, so again he knows full well that he’s ascribing a false binary to Dean when he operates in both.

(Robbie’s season 7 seemed to be full of this because 7x20 also has a totally fake binary for the sake of subtext - Charlie can’t flirt with the security guard because she’s  _only_  into women, not even in an emergency… Dean, of course, is happy to help out… Immediately not playing into the arbitrary rule established about functional flirting on the job vs sexuality - or playing right into it and revealing another side of himself to help Charlie, just as Sam reveals how deep his Harry Potter nerdiness runs.)

So, thematically, where does this all go and why is it important? 

In season 10 when Dean is a demon and off “howling at the moon” with Crowley, during their subtextual elopement and honestly I would say textual sexual tryst (triplets comment in 10x01, implication Crowley knows how much Dean can stick up his butt in 11x23, “maybe I’ve rubbed off all over you” in 12x15…), their official break up is marked with Crowley yelling at Dean to “Pick a bloody side”, after Dean spends the episode overtly struggling between being a demon and a human. Of course this phrasing mirrors sentiments real life bisexual people can have to deal with from intolerant people. In the end of that particular episode Dean accepts he’s a demon, but on his own terms, not being bound to Crowley’s desires for him, after the King of Hell runs out of interest to Dean as a source of free drinks and no consequences fun as he starts making demands of Dean to work for him. Sam and Cas pick a side for him shortly after to cure him of being a demon, and then again at the end of the season to cure him of the Mark of Cain, the root cause of his transformation, after Dean had spent most of the season adapting to living as a hybrid human and Knight of Hell. 

This arc resolves at the end of the next season metaphorically, when Dean restores harmony to the universe by reconciling light and darkness in Chuck and Amara, picking neither side in a binary which has been causing conflict by one overpowering the other since the dawn of time and currently threatening the existence of the universe when Dark attempts to destroy Light. Dean is described by Chuck as “the firewall between light and darkness” in 11x21, emphasising he has a place of cosmic importance in occupying a middle ground between two binary choices. He is both a “virile manifestation of the divine” (so says a server in a hippy cafe in 7x07, but there’s more to his words than he knows), and a worthy bearer of what turned out to be a mark of primordial darkness that made him a conduit of Amara’s power. Dean doesn’t  _need_  to pick a side, and occupying ground from both sides makes him stronger. Not for nothing, Chuck also is revealed to be bisexual during his return arc, clearly stating he had had both girlfriends and boyfriends while hanging out incognito on Earth.

By the end of season 11 then, it is clear through these textual statements and actions that Dean is a character linked to this pattern of a strong connection or implication of one thing and also to something that is presented as an opposite or opposing force to it in the narrative, and that he represents a middle ground embodying both. He is the croissookie. 

Though the show leaves a lot to be desired in textual representation when it comes to Dean’s bisexuality, the subtextual thread of the story is filled with imagery and suggestiveness directly relating to this depiction, and this exploration is only a small part of the way Dean is surrounded by the queer subtext of the show. This particular imagery relating to Dean is a regular, important and eventually universe-saving part of his characterisation, and discussion of the imagery of him occupying a dual nature can be applied to many of the other ways the show explores and divides his psyche without making it into a discussion of his bisexuality at all - these divided aspects of his personality have been fuelling discussion of his character for years. And as he has a separate and extremely detailed queer reading, applying this facet of his character to his bisexuality specifically creates a fascinating reading of the depiction of this in the text.

Standard disclaimer none of this  _proves_  anything but I love looking at Dean this way and it completely informs my reading of him.


	8. Is Cas Attracted to Dean?

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> We know Dean is sexually attracted to Cas (cue 1,000+ gifs and photos as evicence:P) but what about Cas? We know he has felt sexual desires and acted on them; but he's still a little harder to read in this aspect to me. I think i can safely assume he feels desire for Dean, but it's odd that i say that based on little to no evidence that immediately jumps to mind. He's sexual, but he's not a sexual being in the same way humans are. His love is shown to us by his actions/emotions towards Dean.

> **[mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/156940858715/we-know-dean-is-sexually-attracted-to-cas-cue)**  answered:

> (continuation of sexuality ask) I guess i’m asking, is there any evidence that Cas feels sexual desire for Dean? We are shown that their love for each other is not one sided, but the physical desire part is treated differently on Cas’s end when we look at it through his lens. How he feels and sees and lets us know how he feels for Dean.
> 
> Hey there. This is really fascinating, because now that we’ve been told that Heaven’s Biggest No No, their “most sacred oath,” is an angel lying with a human… it really puts A LOT of Castiel’s… reticence? Is that a good word for it? Hesitation, maybe? Or stand-offishness?
> 
> Whatever. It puts his long history of keeping Dean at arm’s length (metaphorically, if not physically… personal space, Cas) in perspective.
> 
> (oh gosh I’ve got 7.01 on in the background and I’m watching Cas return the souls to purgatory and the whole sad conversation with Dean about apologizing and redeeming himself and… oh no..)
> 
> Where was I? Right.
> 
> I wonder how hard he’s been shoving down his “illegal” feelings for Dean. Feelings that could literally get him killed for even expressing them, let alone acting on them?
> 
> It seems entirely plausible, no?

 

* * *

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/157152265083/we-know-dean-is-sexually-attracted-to-cas-cue)

Oh gosh, @medeah asked me about this ages ago and I said I’d put something together and then forgot because it was like 5 minutes before everyone began arriving for my Lord of the Rings marathon. >.> I love the new context we got which explains why Cas would hold back but here’s some stuff I cobbled together at the time before we had it confirmed SO loudly that this is like the Ultimate Taboo for angels…

medeah  
Hi, Lizzy! […] I would really like to know your thoughts about Cas’s sexuality and if there is really a possibility that he can have a relationship of that nature with Dean (given of course that the show has the courage to do something like that, but I refuse to lose hope). I think that while there’s no doubt that Cas loves Dean, I don’t know if he could exactly feel sexual desire towards him, he already has said that he finds sex  “boring” (along with wars, the repetition) but then again he hadn’t experience it first-hand yet, not until April and now he could at least remember how that feels (unless something like the pb and jelly sandwich happens and as much as he wants to feel that again he is simply unable to do it being an angel and all) I’ve read somewhere that Cas could be demi sexual, my impression is that while he doesn’t loathe the idea, he isn’t exactly feel incline to have sexual relationships, not like Dean (I rewatched S05X03, the “personal space” scene, and Dean is so blatantly flirting with Cas at the point of make me think that if Cas had understand all that references, glances and Dean’s body language, they would have ended up in bed, right there, ugh!) but since Cas can’t say no to Dean and thinking that  it could make him happy, he would agree to have sex with him, progressing into somewhat an acquired taste?. Hope this isn’t too long or too inarticulate, or too in the wrong place, I don’t know what I’m doing ;)

elizabethrobertajones  
[…] I agree Cas is demisexual and portrayed as such. I also think if the SHOW decides to hook up Dean n Cas they’re really not going to pay that more than lip service if they were 100% committed to Destiel, they’re just not super sensitive to things like that :P

I think that Cas has shown attraction to Dean though, maybe not as consistently as Dean checking him out but there are moments [quick elaboration now I’m not preparing for a party: the first one that jumped to mind was in 6x18 which for some reason was on my mind, a couple of people caught Cas really eyeing him up and Dean flirting but it’s sort of hidden in the background especially that Dean seems to be looking at Cas -

 <http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/141562344965> 

That’s right at the end of the episode when Dean’s in his hot new cowboy outfit and there’s another gifset which sadly has frozen after a new round of Tumblr borking everything, catching Cas’s smile at the very last moment before Dean puts on the cowboy hat, all of which looks really flirty and of course implicates Cas in it :P 

I also in the course of not-answering this properly stumbled on this gifset which is obviously exaggerated with other gifs:

<http://destiel-is-love-cockles-is-life.tumblr.com/post/145275281965/its-not-that-often-that-we-see-cas-checking-dean>

But does include a comment that in the actual canon gif Cas still seems to be checking Dean out:

10x03 is an interesting one because Dean invites Cas in, basically, and it seems a moment where Dean is the more receptive to a relationship (immediately post demon!Dean and some serious life perspective), but Cas bottles out and picks duty and more work with Heaven over Dean. There’s the infamous bed-clearing (dir. Jensen Ackles) which if you went into the episode all pumped full of the narrative negative space bed eta from season 9, from 9x14 where Dean had his Side and it was implied the other was empty and waiting, and here he is with a cluttered other side of the bed he starts clearing when Cas is in the room… really really suggests he was about to proposition Cas to stay with him. In light of 12x10 the fact that Cas switches gears to want to return to his work with Hannah and get the fuck away from Dean before he just tackles him onto the bed, books or not… Yeah :P I feel like 12x10 subtly confirms for me Cas’s attraction in scenarios like this one where the burden was on Cas to make a move/accept a proposition, and he, well, recoils and leaves.

(There’s some people who missed season 10 in fandom and all the flaility about this - when I went back in my 10x03 tag I found a lot of references to this moment but no gifset… I’m still 6 episodes off in my rewatch and intend to make one, but for now here’s a crappy tiny gif of after Dean peeled away from talking nose to nose with Cas to start tidying - 

I capped it using a program without sound so I can’t remember wtf dialogue corresponds to this but I’m fairly sure it’s before Cas says anything about leaving.)

Honestly though, despite how the acting for Cas is routinely more “madly in love” than “extremely turned on in your presence” there’s stuff like that whole “at least I don’t look like a lumberjack” nonsense that suggests Cas is well aware of how Dean looks and has some ideas about how aesthetically pleasing he is or not… Combined with how it’s easy to read Cas as in love with Dean, the fact he’s developing standards about how Dean looks is fairly amusing to me. 

Also there’s the time Cas was human and now we have hindsight that this is maybe the one time Cas DIDN’T feel stuck with that sacred oath it’s all the more interesting… He’s pretty bitchy to Dean in 9x06 because of being a jilted lover, but in 9x09 he’s outrageously flirty, 

and has picked hunting as a profession and in like 1 episode flat screen time accelerated right through the process of trying to live a normal human life (the Dean and Lisa parallel) to I guess the whole “what’s it like settling down with a hunter” mindset :P In that case if we use the tried and tested hunting = dating metaphor, Dean has to turn down Cas’s strong advances, but it’s not like Cas isn’t flirting in the first place without any of the narrative or set stuff to back it up (and yes there’s set stuff too :P)]

There are more obvious implications though [which aren’t really coming from Cas so much as the show implying there is/could be a sexual element to Cas’s interest in Dean, but like I said about them not really caring about the distinction between love and sex when it comes to personal identity, in a storytelling way, implication can mean just as much in a sort of telling instead of showing way, as in, they might just make these jokes or serious implications as just something people say/they show as a suggestion, but because it’s been layered into the story so much, at least from a writing POV it’s a real part of how Cas feels to the WRITERS even if these things didn’t come directly from Cas… By repeating it enough there’s a narrative that Cas is interested in Dean regardless of how much that’s shown in canon]

In 11x02 when the angels torture Cas they’re implying he has a sexual relationship with Dean, and it’s one of those why say it if it’s not at least an element of the story (in the sense Cas could have the potential) [hi, hindsight Lizzy again - and 12x10 makes it a STRONG element of the story that angels loving humans is such a no-no, making the choice of these angels back in 11x02 to specifically threaten Cas’s genitals, all that more intriguing because now we KNOW there’s a taboo about it, it’s clearer than ever this is what the angels meant by that and that they’re accusing Cas of breaking that oath - the confrontation probably mirrors the 12x10 one to Akobel although I will have to watch them side by side to comment >.>]

There’s lots of other things in this bracket that come from stuff characters imply or joke about them, which is less serious but still does the same basic work - outside judgements on Cas’s interest in Dean which just go so far but there are SO MANY of them that there’s a very persistent narrative regardless that it’s just what people think, that it ends up occupying two layers of “other people’s judgement of what Cas feels about Dean” and “the list of people implying he’s into Dean” which we can easily take as read after it’s been said so many times. I mean, that’s a lot of the earlier seasons subtext right there; the jokes about their relationship are almost all in a very specific block of the show. “Blow me, Cas” “Cas get out of my ass” etc have similar implications from Dean… you can file that under Dean projecting or Dean lashing out or whatever but essentially Dean understands at least some aspect of his relationship with Cas to have the potential for a sexual relationship. 

The 5x18 one always interests me because of the parallels of Dean lashing out at Bobby for not being his father, Sam for the very specific issues of faith/trust in his brother tailored to THEIR current argument, and then all these sexual barbs at Cas. Makes you wonder if he’s tailoring the other insults to the recipient why he lands on that for Cas :P He has a lot of weird reactions to Cas when it comes to personal space and all that in the early seasons, and calls Cas creepy a few times - it’s written off as Cas’s lack of people skills, and you can throw in more of Dean projecting, but Cas DOES have a strong interest in him one way or another, and treats him differently so there’s a lot of room to suggest Dean was at least picking up some vibe from Cas he didn’t know what to make of. I’m not sure I would say it WAS sexual so early on (I would agree it could be romantic) but it’s part of a lot of implications and stuff in a writing way rather than a character way they build on to later start seriously telling us Cas is in love.

In season 9 they REALLY worked on that and I am reminded of the “Cas’s fake Heaven is pictures of naked Dean” nonsense… Again not really something Cas DOES but something implied about him. It was cut but I think 11x02 re-introduces the same ideas of 9x22 (gosh I wonder who is responsible for that :P) with the ANGELS making the judgement on Cas that he’s sexually interested in Dean, while also telling us he’s in love, and the LOVE part of it is definitely supported repeatedly by pretty much all the events in season 9. 

While I’m a huge fan of ace!Cas, and it makes sense still especially judging him against how the other angels behave, Dabb especially has been involved in crafting a fairly long game to show us how the angels feel about Dean and Cas being in love… With 12x10 I now really really think that this is also telling us that Cas WOULD be interested but has been keeping to that oath at least with far more restraint and self-punishment than many angels. Which lets us have our cake and eat it with ace!Cas behaviour vs other angels’ behaviour, but also Cas’s growing interest in Dean as it becomes a “problem” to Heaven I guess also something Cas struggles with more and creates the strong reactions the angels have to him and Dean, because it just makes sense he’d be in conflict to this. There’s a great meta about the forbidden love aspect this introduces for Cas that I reblogged after that episode.

Anyway I think the Cas in actual romantic love with Dean subtext is powerful enough that the question of sexuality is more of a fandom question to wonder about the dynamics of it… If the show wanted to put them together, we already have enough evidence of romantic interest from Cas and sexual & romantic interest from Dean that’s obvious. The more nuanced reading I guess would be for us :P I think in this case society sucking at differentiating between love and attraction as a split model works in our favour. >.> 


	9. Did Dean And Cas Ever Have Sex? (Well, No but…)

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Do you think Dean and Cas have ever had sex?

* * *

Oh good grief this question is way more complicated than you bargained for, because for some reason I have a lot of opinions :P

We’ll go with a hard “no” for current canon as of what would ever be revealed and my personal preference and belief for the storytelling and what it delivers that they’re not and never have as far as the story wants us to believe, people who have ever shacked up in the past, and that if we actually had a romance for them out in the open, they’d come to it like two lost and confused baby ducklings who needed basic concepts like holding hands explained to them as they learn to be together. (I mean they probably already know how to do that hypothetically but somehow I feel when it’s Dean trying to figure out a relationship with Cas, he’s going to have to relearn it from the ground up)

See also: pretty much ever coda fic ever written, minus the ones which are operating on assumption 2, that somewhere along the line there’s a pre-existing relationship. 

And THAT’S how I watch the show for my own amusement and disregard what could and should happen in the  _storytelling_  for what amusing suggestions there are in canon that Dean n Cas have been married since season 4. These things just get casually dropped as time goes by and Dean n Cas continue to not actually end up together despite the entire universe acting as agony aunt to them, so in the very long run it becomes inconsequential, and yet…

So they meet, fall in love, blah blah, over season 4. When we’re watching the FUN version of the show where we’re allowed to say “yeah that totally happened”, probably the 2 most significant things that happen are Dean x Anna, which creates a love triangle with Cas that creates a narrative source of sexual tension beyond just all the staring. At the end of the season, Cas makes Dean swear that vow to Heaven in a scene that looks like they’ve said their wedding vows to each other and ends in a not-kiss. Cas then rebels for Heaven, and flips those vows into a personal bond between him and Dean. 

Following hard on its heels is their season 5 hook up, in 5x03. I probably don’t need to explain how that comes about, but it’s Dean’s favourite pick up line for a reason. This is immediately ruined before he’s even had a chance to figure out how he feels about defiling Cas, by 5x04, where he sees future!Dean and future!Cas in a terrible self-destructive relationship where they’re together but also vindictively sleeping with most of the camp, Cas is taking all those drugs, and Dean is on his suicidal revenge mission against the devil. A good chunk of End!Cas is designed to make Dean think he ruined Cas ANYWAY even in the boring main text, so this following on the heels of their first and only hook up kills that side of their relationship dead. 

(Dean spitefully uses the “last night on earth” line on Jo within Cas’s range of hearing AND sight in 5x10. Seriously. Look at where he’s sitting with Ellen the last time you see him before the camera wanders off into the other conversation. And then we have 5x18 with the whole “blow me Cas/last time someone looked at me like that I got laid” which makes a whole lot more sense if you take the entire length of season 5 as Dean’s sexual frustration with Cas and an utterly unresolved relationship where they just haven’t talked about their hook up and why Dean has consistently avoided the subject or further hook ups since, despite clearly still being interested in Cas)

This bleeds over into season 6, where they officially act like bitter exes for a good chunk of the season, before BITTER BETRAYAL DAY. Then they’re just depressing exes until the end of season 7, with the only major incident I can even mention being “naked and covered in bees” as Cas with no filter any more, who has been feeling wronged since freakin’ single digit season 5 episodes about why Dean’s stopped showing any interest in him despite the blistering sexual tension of the early Destiel seasons, finally (misguidedly) trying to make a move on Dean. (Dean reports it as a semi-humorous example of how broken Cas is to Sam, but he kind of needs to blurt it because that whole episode had a strong subplot about how Dean had wronged Cas and the moment is haunting him along with all the other things he and Cas need to figure out to move on)

Aaand then we get to Purgatory. THIS one was mostly other people’s fanon, until 10x19 convinced me. “What happens in purgatory, stays in purgatory,” said Dean’s subconscious, in an episode with a yawning gap about Cas, but Dean walking in pointless circles with Benny does not illustrate the general Purgatory experience. It is very specifically a metaphor for how he could have left any time, twisted around by the Werther spell to be about taking his own life, but in Purgatory’s case, meant crossing back out of death and into life. Except he wouldn’t leave without Cas. And that very dodgy phrasing from deep within Dean’s own head sold me. Somehow or another, they totally found time to reconcile.

Which bore out when Cas was finally back and Dean, um, couldn’t contain his excitement at seeing him back to normal. There are a few narrow windows here: we don’t know how long Cas hung out with them between 8x07 and 8x08, but it was presumably at least overnight. 8x08 had them confused about basic details like if Cas was still going to hang out with them long term, and more tellingly, what the sleeping arrangements should be with 3 of them, suggesting whatever happened the night before the episode, it was not standard motel procedure, and yet Cas clearly had not left their side since. 

There’s also the matter of the missing 7 hours or so in 8x23, while Dean n Cas are on their date to meet the cupid, since Sam needs 8 hours to do the final trial, and they definitely pass, while Dean n Cas fall in a time sink. I tend to think in context Dean would had wanted to make the move after their conversation they were having before they were interrupted by the cupid’s arrival, so it’s possible Dean just spent seven and a half hours working up the nerve about how he was going to bring up the subject.

After that (everything is terrible), we have an unexpected joke opening for hook ups that I’m not sure I can believe, but on the other hand, what the hey this happens in a Bucklemming episode so it’s not like the emotional consistency of the episode is absolute rule: there’s the 2-season long gag linking Dean n Cas’s appreciation of the Bunker’s water pressure with the “shower sex is complicated” line in 9x23, which could only have paid off in 9x03 between them.

More seriously, their last current canon hook up that absolutely definitely, I will fight you over this, is tragically as far back as 9x06, but does at least have 2 episodes after it emphasising loudly in the subtext that, from 9x07, a parallel with Dean’s first real girlfriend, and Dean dropping back into her life/place of work, followed by 9x08 and Dean lamenting sexily about hook ups being heartbreaking and terrible with a belated side order of “oh god what have I done”, followed by 9x09 where Cas and Dean were flirting so disgustingly that they had to be stopped, followed by their whole “trusting couple” episode in 9x10 all suggesting a beautiful trajectory before everything was ruined forever and the Drowley love triangle began.

(I am making a very strong case for the whole Dean in booty shorts thing in 11x04 being an attempt to get Cas’s interest (”What’s with the shorts?” “I’ve walked back and forth in front of Cas 18 times today and he hasn’t even looked up!”), but Cas at that point as we found out in 11x06, was presumably *more* ill and damaged than when we saw him there, so I can understand how he passed it up…)

And this is the sorry state of affairs of how Dean and Cas have probably had sex like… 4 or 5 times in 8 years. 

Which I think is a much worse answer than “no they have never” tbh because that is much less heartbreaking. :P


	10. Cas and Love and Souls

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> I was wondering what you thought about soul canon for the show? I've been watching Buffy recently and trying to reflect over the difference between the vampires with and without souls and thought it would be interesting as applied to Cas. The idea being that without a soul one can only do things for selfish reasons (even if the actions are good) and you require one for a certain level of altruism. I personally think Cas grew a soul at some point, and I was wondering if you thought that some of his early actions on the show reflect this. For instance, the whole saving the world for Dean instead of for the fact that the world needs saving. Also just curious about your thoughts on the whole soul thing in general. :) 

* * *

I’m totally aboard the fanon train that Cas has had a soul since the end of 8x23 that hasn’t gone anywhere since, no matter what happened to him. Death said back in season 6 that souls couldn’t be broken, so I get the feeling you can’t just destroy one once you have it - Cas just keeps piling angel up on top of it. It seems to be forgotten and I’d kind of like it to stay that way unless the show is going to pull a scenario directly from a fan fic on us, because Cas is one of the only characters NOT to do a demon deal and he’s got a ruthless practicality about him that is a very bad combination when you hang out with Crowley :P If this ever comes up on the show NOT in the context of building Cas up to happy married retirement with Dean and a guinea pig, only bad will come of it :P

I’m less certain about how angels are different from not having a soul though. I’ve always understood what Anna says back in 4x10 about what angels are SUPPOSED to feel as being an order, but pretty much all the angels display emotions of some sort or another.

Actually, brief detour, but I watched 6x07 last night and was reminded that vampires in SPN work under, like,  _reverse_  Buffy rules:

> Alpha Vampire:   
> The boy with no soul. I’ve got big plans for you. It’s amazing how that pesky, little soul gets in the way. But not for you. You will be the perfect… animal. 

I mean, even back in the first infodump about them ever, John told us that they mate for life in a sort of dismissive way you might describe, idk, that some animals do as well :P  But if you don’t look at it like John, it seems fairly straightforward to just assume vampires have a lot of messy human baggage because they remember their past lives and still act on emotion and feel love and mate for life like HUMANS do. Later lore doubles down on this by thinking much harder about where the human soul is in all this and I guess Dabbflin’s conclusion was that vampires have to be affected by its existence inside them even if they’ve been turned (there was no wider plot reason to this line so I assume that’s just a detail one of them liked :P). 6x05 showing you can be turned back from being a vampire also suggests some complicated, arcane “dibs” system on souls between Heaven, Hell and Purgatory even more than we already knew (though it does amuse me that the next time Dean “dies” after that it’s because he’s in Purgatory :P) … idk. Point is, having ANY sort of type of soul in you, even if it’s been twisted into a monster one, still has some of the burden of having a human soul.

Cas back in season 6 made a point of telling Crowley he didn’t have a soul to trade, but, well, one of my favourite quotes about Cas is the obvious “too much heart” one and that’s from the start of season 8, referring to 99% of everything he did before he’d feasibly have a soul. I think Cas rebelled because of love back in season 4 - I think maybe a much more hard to define kind of feeling that’s still arms length from messy human emotions, but I do wonder HOW far. Unlike vampires, angels were created to be good, and to love - their final orders were to love humanity, if I’m not mistaken? And they were originally created to love God? I think they’re actually creatures OF love, just in this sort of cosmic way (but which translates down to the family squabble of the apocalypse when all’s said and done… :P) 

I wonder if the difference is really just the freedom to love by choice whoever they like, and Anna fell to have that freedom… At the end of season 4 if you look at it through a non-shippy lens, Dean talks Cas over by reminding him of humanity, the original mission for the angels being to love and protect them. (I mean that still applies, but that’s also discarding all the character development between them and that Cas continually tells Dean he did everything because of him and like… the endless maintext confirmations of where Cas’s compass points :P Still, Cas’s rebellion is altruistically motivated because he chooses to believe in Dean’s greater good, not Heaven’s, so the end result is concern about humanity and who has the best idea about what to do for it.) 

And then later on the angels are in a total mess because they have all strayed so far from the original mission and they’re trapped in power struggles and all the immediate problems of Heaven, and they’re so short-sighted by the need for orders and their inability to exercise freedom and choice (without lengthy character arcs to realise it) that I think you could easily say that’s behind all the angel turmoil. Raphael in season 6 literally can’t comprehend a universe where they don’t follow what was supposed to be destiny - he’s Cas’s enemy because Cas is representative of freedom and choice, and deciding NOT to do it. But once Heaven doesn’t have an apocalypse to focus on, it crumbles about what its purpose is, despite the fact the angels all theoretically know what they’re supposed to be doing… 

(I do also think in season 6 Cas’s motivations are more complicated than JUST trying to save the world for Dean - he makes all his decisions through/about Dean but I think it is as much because Dean has shown him a way to live/things to believe in/a stake in the world to protect that can all be filtered through Cas’s experiences with Dean as to WHY he’s making the decisions, but just because Dean taught him to value the world in a certain way, that doesn’t mean Cas ONLY values it because Dean. He does genuinely love humanity, as much as we snark about that line about him being  _in love_  with ~humanity~)

Anyway, I see Cas as perfectly capable of making loving/altruistic choices before he has a soul, but afterwards - 9x11 through to current time - Cas is a changed angel and he chalks it up to his experience as a human, but it’s an immediate and permanent change to the softer, more vulnerable and emotive Cas we have now. I think from then on Cas does feel things much more intensely, in the messy, human way, even if he goes to great pains to pretend he doesn’t. I don’t think it changes his fundamental ability to love, but I think it changes the way he expresses it and how much sway he lets it have on his life. The end of season 9, with Metatron’s taunting, is a very good example of that. Cas has always acted on emotion but Metatron takes a great delight in pointing out that it wasn’t altruistic but selfish love that Cas acted against him for. Not for ~humanity~ but for Dean.

So again I think it’s completely backwards from Buffy; that if Cas changed at all it was going from more altruistically driven love to being able to choose what he wanted to love with complete freedom: after 9x23 Cas’s choices are always directly about Dean, in a much more open way. He helps get rid of the Mark and has no other conflict of interest in the second half of season 10 (and I’d argue the Hannah stuff in the first half shows as a mirror to Cas that he is letting go of this conflict of interest and following the “human things” that matter to him instead of Heaven’s orders for once) and in season 11 his relationship with Dean is at the centre of the PTSD and feelings of worthlessness that lead him to saying yes to Lucifer (of his own free choice as a being capable of being possessed and having to consent to an angel) - from 11x14 onwards he’s only still possessed because he wanted to use Lucifer to save Dean. In season 12 he’s dealing with some shit but it seems from the fact he has to leave (handled much better than all the other leaving in the 3rd episode times lately for some reason :P) seems to be very much about a hurdle to get over before he can feel at home and it looks like it’s going to be super personal again in the second half of the season…

And I think the ability to love selfishly is a much more human thing at least by Supernatural’s rules, because it’s being able to choose something for yourself, and for an angel, to defy the orders of the unconditional and impersonal love they were supposed to have. Since to me that IS the most human thing (which the show always has triple underlined as free will), and the way Cas changes after when I think he would have a soul even while being an angel, I think that’s much more a sign he has a soul BECAUSE his love is selfish now? (Selfish in the sense of “being about himself” not that he’s doing bad things to hoard that love all for himself or something :P) 


	11. Cas and Humanity

**Anonymous**  asked:

This week's big debate seems to be about Cas and humanity. I've read posts that are both excited and upset about how it seems like Cas is eventually going to choose to become human. I was wondering if you had any insight into whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for him, or if he should choose to stay an angel.

Heya! :) I am going to answer this to the best of my ability which is a liiittle bit loopy and over-tired today :P 

But yeah I have been scrolling my dash and I am not dead yet so I have seen this discussion going on :D I sort of feel like I haven’t got much to say about it in a way that I haven’t said/agreed with before (so it’s been redundant to weigh in), but like… riiiight back when I was a Fandom Newbie and getting to know the lay of the land and I just got absorbed right into the general fandom consensus at that time among the groups of meta writers I glommed onto… 

I mean, because I showed up after 9x18, and then though of course I was around for the following episodes I really started the whole circus of new episode reactions along with everyone, with season 10… between tearing apart the Cas stuff in 9x18 and then the Cas and Hannah stuff in 10x01-3 it just seemed really really obvious where Carver was going with it, and what it meant to Cas? And I mean okay this was 3 (4?) years ago but I also feel like with Cas’s development getting stalled over and over and over except in tangential ways, this was all put on ice like 3 times over before he even got possessed by Lucifer, so the MAJOR work on this was between the last minutes of 8x23 and 10x18 and even then that’s the STORYTELLING of it, and of course Cas himself puts the whole thing on ice as something he has the luxury to think about in 9x09. (Except for the one peanut butter and jelly conversation.)

So in 9x18 the MAJOR thing is that the lyrics “loneliness is a coat you wear” are laid over Cas taking off the coat to mend it (although that’s left out so it’s more like… he takes it off to gather his thoughts on what he’s going to do next, which is even more symbolic and useless in a practical way of why he does it). He then puts the coat back on to greet his army… And in a few episodes Metatron does the “draped yourself in the flag of Heaven” thing, which when 9x18 is all about the subtext and telling us to pay attention, I find a very very straight line to what that meant about him doing similar to 12x19 - using Heaven but not wanting Heaven, and never mind his motivation with Dean (and that being what changes his mind and makes him play Metatron’s game), the way it portrays Heaven as an obligation and a duty to help, but with a loneliness that comes from wearing that coat. He’s walking out into a parking lot full of angels but the lyrics are screaming that he’s without love, and lonely, and the end of the season confirms these choices were the reason. 

And in season 10 it gets more personal, and we have Hannah as a counter example. With Daniel in 10x01 who wants to stay on earth and gets what that’s all about we see Cas empathising, but at the end of the episode he goes way deeper than that, talking about human things that upset and startle Hannah. She literally drapes the flag of Heaven over him in 10x02 and smooths it down and accidentally reveals that the plaid of Winchesters is underneath the collar all along, and Cas is sleeping and acting more and more human while sick. She wants to give him his grace back to stop this and he resists… Out of penance and lack of self-worth and knowing he did a heinous thing to steal grace in the first place (again, for Dean, not just to be an angel again but because he needed to survive to warn him about Ezekiel). But symbolically she is trying to make him take the grace and be an angel. Be a leader, the angel the others will rally behind and follow. She represents how all of Heaven feels about him (and 12x19 and 12x15 cover similar ground in what Kelvin says about Cas). 

But also in 10x07 it goes deeper with how she feels about humanity - that the human things are forbidden, that love and enjoying sensual pleasures like showers are just *wrong* for angels to experience. She rejects human things entirely as stuff that’s not for her, and nopes out hard. And she is symbolic of angels in general, of Heaven’s desires and feelings in general when she asks him to be a leader. 

This is the sort of pressure - innocent of malice but FULL of lack of understanding - that is at odds with what Cas FEELS which is full empathy to wanting to be on earth… an actual understanding and feeling for these human things. He’s in his own body without a shared vessel as 10x09 goes on to confirm, which means he has none of the conflict Hannah does there, and 10x09 paints quite a picture of Cas as wildly unlike all the angels in this way, because it confirms for once and for all he’s alone in there and the Jimmy issue is resolved. 

To quickly skip ahead on this side of things, 12x10 shows the same thing but dialled up to a zillion. Instead of Hannah standing in for a clueless family that doesn’t understand and can’t empathise with the different feelings and sense of belonging Cas has, but is still mostly harmless if accidentally intolerant and stifling with their expectations and demands, we have Ishim, who stands in for the worst sort of family experience with intolerance. He’s also in love with a human and that’s the metaphor for violent, self-loathing homophobia I guess, as he kills Lily’s daughter to emotionally sever himself from her, to no avail, and tries to kill Cas for having the same “weakness”. Lashing out with hatred because of the internalised feelings of crossing a taboo line that their society has turned into a harsh rule. Supposedly good reasons are offered with the nephilim thing, but obviously Cas and Dean aren’t gonna have a baby any time soon, so the metaphor unfolds itself as queer through and through once Ishim turns on Dean.

And to walk aaaall the way back DOWN canon, I’m stalled in my rewatch in 4x10 at Anna pacing around talking about how she did the worst thing imaginable and cut out her grace and fell. 4x10 is the first episode to actually explore the nature of angels and lays down some ground rules, like that sex and disobedience are forbidden. 

> ANNA  
> Orders are orders. I’m sure I have a death sentence on my head.
> 
> PAMELA  
> Why?
> 
> ANNA  
> I disobeyed… which, for us, is about the worst thing you can do. I fell.
> 
> DEAN  
> Meaning?
> 
> PAMELA  
> She fell to earth, became human.

(I have the transcript open and scrolled down to that part in a tab and have for months… CBA to go find her talking about sex later but I think we all know the stuff she says)

That “worst thing you can do” line feels to me like with retcons from 12x10, that the “sacred oath” may be any sort of angel to human dalliance or connection or desire to BE and to be FREE. The same thing Hannah nopes out of in 10x07 is what Anna had to tear out her grace to experience. Anna having to take her grace back to survive is tragic, especially as it puts her right in the vulnerable firing line of Naomi’s reprogramming. This metaphor is SO much worse with Anna than even Cas, as it’s so simple about her returning to her family as an angel again after making a break to be free and live as a human like she wants, then to be tortured back to the family line and pure obedience, to her eventual death as an unrecognisable killer, a la Cas in 8x17. But without the sympathetic inside view and long arc to explain it or the narrative having any interest in saving her >.> (Hi, I like Anna and am bitter about that whole thing 5eva :P) 

Cas in 9x09 also takes back a grace to survive (and this whole arc brings in the clear concept that has been on the backburner since Anna of grace and consciousness as 2 separate things, and grace to an angel being more of its power than its mind, though functionally they seem one and the same when nothing hinky is going on - something else important for human endgame as well as showing ways of removing grace without falling and turning into a human baby)… Again like Anna Cas has little choice when he takes the grace back. He was happy to die human until he learned Sam and Dean were in trouble, and made a horrific choice to help them by stealing grace. After that getting his real grace seemed like the only way to fix him dying of his actions, though he seemed happy to again, the story had other ideas :P (And Mittens wrote something on how Cas has “let himself die” in the way he didn’t in 10x18, where he has to pass through death for change and reaping the character benefits of transitions. (Flyingfish1′s heroine journey meta also comes to mind). Of course by not letting himself die, he’s trapped in the 10x18 > 12x19 holding pattern on his entire life and personal arcs except the ever-worsening depression and self-worth arcs that spring up in the meantime, and the belonging one.)

Anyway it’s all connected, these angels with their connections to humanity, either what they really really want and are denied by fate, or by fate end up experiencing, and really really don’t want. Or in Ishim’s case he really wanted and then because of being an example of a total tool representing institutional prejudices, decided murder was the best way out of his brush with feeling human things. And they all tell us things about Cas from different angles, with different angels (sorry. wordplay was right there.) The long and short of it is that Cas is supposed to be one of those marble statues with no doubts (in 4x10 - *buzzer noise* WRONG *points at 4x07 and “I have doubts”) or that human things are not for them (*points at Cas even bringing up the subject and confusing Hannah about why you’d want to learn them and horrified that Cas seemed to have picked up human cooties by admiring these qualities in the first place*) or indeed that angels in general are massively intolerant to humans and from start to finish it’s a death penalty offence to get tangled up with them or want to be/be one of them. (I know 12x10 is more applicable to the Destiel side of things but the general message about Heaven’s intolerance with “humanity” instead of queerness with all the other examples makes a lot of sense to me.)

Actually I’ve seen the argument a lot that this debate is metaphorical to the trans experience for Cas changing species, even more than the interspecies romance parallel to sexuality metaphors, and I think it is fairly simple to me that this is part of the general queer metaphor applied to Cas as something the angels are intolerant of. 12x10 threw in the Benjamin stuff too and made it a little angel gender studies thing (which Hannah also helped with in 10x17 by reprising her “totally in love with Cas” look in a male vessel and not giving a crap about the change). With Benjamin they said that the angel Cas was closest to there was the one who had a ….. friendship ….. with his vessel. So there’s a lot going on there between that and the “his vessel is a woman, benjamin is an angel” thing) :P 

I think, anyway, Anna wanting to be human and getting disowned on pain of death and having to become an angel again, and even then being hunted for daring to not be an angel once, is the closest parallel to what Cas faces. Especially for internalised ideas he had at the time and hadn’t got to unlearn until he was a human. 

And I think, additionally to that, he may not have even realised that being human even answered his feeling of not belonging or being different until AFTER it happened. Like, Metatron forced it on him too soon and then everything was non-stop awful and then suddenly he’s had to get grace again (and heading for that flag of heaven metaphor), and only then he gets to reflect on what it felt like, by way of being an angel again looking back on it. It was so brutal and short that he never got a chance to appreciate being human at the time in a way where it would explain to him what he lacks. 

By 10x18 he has the family dinner and he takes his coat off for it. Heaven has rejected him, he’s seemingly chosen the Winchesters again, and got his grace back, but he has to go back to the grind, and he doesn’t change his wardrobe, he keeps the coat which is basically performative angel-ness with Winchester plaid underneath. 

(Actually about the only time I can think of that angel-ness is used as the queer metaphor and not the other way around is in 9x06 when Cas is playing cis straight human to Nora and Dean shows up yelling about him being an angel at his workplace… I think that’s a very circumstantial metaphor which is more about delightfully queercoding the entire thing than a wider statement… After all, contained within a season where the main arc for Cas is leading a heaven army thing, and ending in “i just want to be an angel” in utter, tragic defeat on the emotional battlefield. Absolutely NOT a statement on what would make Cas feel HAPPY, just useful and numb, per 10x03 and what he says about human pain and how revealing those lines are side by side about what Cas is feeling and how angel is he REALLY, like, deep down in his too-big heart where it matters)

But yeah he just keeps on going after 10x18 and this all kinda drops away, so I think until season 12 basically nothing was really done to mess around with this concept again in a substantial, meaningful way aside from attack dog and similar arcs tangential to this and more about Cas’s state of mind in general (as the same conflict can be applied to Dean when human). It has become more about Cas belonging in the Winchesters as the main thing - 12x19 has Cas being way more upfront about using Kelvin to his face, that he’s only going along with it because his old connections to Heaven are useful, as well as shining a massive spotlight on Cas considering himself a guardian angel as a bad bad thing, which is actively damaging his beloved family relationships and especially upsetting Dean. He would rather protect them from afar, and I think long-term Cas ending up with the Winchesters but as an angel would always be somewhat prone to that sort of thought in an emergency that as a more powerful being he would have to protect them, and a sense of not belonging entirely as another species that can’t quiiite relate no matter how different he is and how much more kinship he feels with humanity even as an angel. I can’t see that as a happy ending, and since 12x19 it feels rather more like it would be not finishing a plotline that is not JUST about this relationship but using it to move the piece on the board about Cas’s human arc forward another step, as his endgame would be not just as human, but also with them, so tying the concepts together isn’t a bad idea, as long as it’s clear this is something in season 9 and 10 Cas came to as a desire without very much contact with them at all, and therefore very much for himself as an understanding of what he is and what he desires. 

And, again, I don’t think Cas has great resources for self-reflection on the subject - not just that Metatron had to turn him human briefly to even make him realise he could ever do it, but something like using the belonging with family arc to help speed it along gives him a clear reason and goal for why it works and would feel right for him and to give him the place to self-analyse with motivation. I really don’t like the idea of equating this entirely with Cas’s belonging with the Winchesters arc all on its own, though. It CAN’T just be about that he should be human to be with his human friends/family etc. But I do think that a lot of the work to explain why he identifies with humanity has ALREADY been done and is a solid, existing part of his character already. 

In a happy ending even if it all gets told tied up with the Winchesters, I would point to season 9 & 10 to argue that it was not JUST FOR them, but that they were the soft landing for him to make a decision. If he became human he wouldn’t be forcing himself to fit in with them, he would be doing it for himself. I mean, since season 4 he is equated with Anna, protesting loudly he’s nothing like her when even before we meet her he admits to one of the cardinal sins of doubt. He has ALWAYS had a slight leaning towards humanity and clearly described as UNANGELIC traits and feelings. So in this way he’s always FELT different and therefore as it gets expanded and expanded and ends up being a deeply complex metaphor and fascinating way to relate to Cas, it’s clear this is an inherent part of him from the start. The human feelings that Hannah violently nopes out of have been things Cas has tolerated, defined himself by, and felt all along. She’s used to show that Cas hasn’t ever been bothered in the same way, and just uses her leaving as an excuse to delve even deeper into human connections by worrying about Claire, and in the narrative, walking us right into proving he has his own body and no Jimmy, and another way Cas is both unique, and uniquely suited to a human endgame.

I think though that a lot of this is personal and subjective on the arguments going around, and I see this sooo deeply through the old meta I read back in season 9 & 10 which has shaped all my ongoing thoughts I do know I have developed probably my own biases on this. I think Cas would never be happy as an angel in a happy families endgame because the Guardian Angel Cas issue (which was his downfall in season 6, so not a new thing, just re-focused recently) would always play on his mind as it’s shown that he self-sabotages his relationships in order to protect them. I see it like season 4 Sam using his powers to exorcise because it’s an ethical way to get rid of demons quick in a fight without stabbing the innocent meatsuit. In season 5 even knowing aaall the trouble it caused him and that Ruby played off his desire to save people as a GOOD thing to do great evil, he was tempted by the demon blood and regrets/resents not being able to use powers to exorcise the kids. (Obviously before he learns they were all just human all along because that episode is so disturbing >.>)

Even if it went some pretty hinky places (as in the end of season 6 for Cas and the guardian angel mentality, with Crowley as his Ruby, as he uses “i still considered myself the Winchesters’ guardian” as a justification) Sam’s motives were for good originally and he missed the idea of sacrificing his own morality to save people for an objective better good. Cas seeing his powers as making him more powerful, therefore more expendable, less included, and with a personal sense of duty to watch over and protect them, HAVING the powers would only ever be living in temptation to do a 12x19 again. Sam only recovers properly without the powers to tempt him and I feel he’s in a very different place as a person by now… Cas with a human endgame might not get room to grow out of it on screen but by his grace being removed (hopefully and tbh by necessity willingly), he’d have the potential and promise that he would be able to recover in the same way from this toxic mentality. And I consider 12x19 very much doing for Cas and the guardian angel thing what Carver era and 8x01 especially did for the codependency. Just put it all on the table and told us, this is hurting them more than it’s doing good in the world. Let’s look at how it hurts them and why. Let’s aim to fix it and let them move past it.

And even if Cas can start to recover from some broad strokes, like feeling more included, feeling like less of a tool/personal attack dog, he will only have a long term chance at happiness if the temptation is removed at the source, and he will need to UNDERSTAND that too and to vocalise some things about his reasons for watching over them like this LONG before he chooses humanity. And these are very much my personal subjective feelings on why it feels BAD to me that Cas would stay an angel, as it’s right off on another end of the spectrum of why people are arguing they feel bad if he would become human. To me the personal identity stuff right down to complex sexuality and gender metaphors are MAIN TEXT in Cas’s arc due to him being an inherently queer character. The “it feel bad” reaction to me right now is that I feel sad for Cas being an angel around the Winchesters forever because he will always be their guardian angel and that’s BAD for what he WANTS which is just to be a part of the family with no complicated strings attached like his obligation to protect them. So to me I see humanity as the obvious answer to that. But that’s a personal reading of what I hope would happen and why. So my explanation of what I see in the text is one thing and this part is another, if that makes sense?

… I hope any of this makes sense. I apologise for typing so long… I know I said I’ve said it all before but I mean I assume you’re not tag-diving on my blog if you’re just asking me and tbh I wouldn’t know what tag to dive either and they’re *my* tags so I’m not judging ;)


	12. The Great Meta Scavenger Hunt - Season Openers And Destiel

Mostly because it’s already January, I thought I’d look at season openers instead of season finales (despite the great temptation) and I’m going with my good old fall back of Destiel meta, aka ranking season openings by Destiel. For some reason this post is excessively long with a full meta per episode but thankfully the adjudicator likes me and will award me 5000 points just for showing up rather than read it again.

* * *

**Season 1:** I’m going with full, Destiel trash hindsight here. (Mostly because I know there are people out there who would loathe this train of thought and have literally called me an asshole for putting Destiel where it doesn’t belong.) I mean, like, embedded in fandom, thirtieth re-watch of the Pilot utter Destiel garbage here. Giving it 5 points out of ten for the set up, and only deducting the other 5 because you need to lift up the carpet to see it.

We have off-screen, later confirmed by Dean in 2x13, Mary telling him “Angels are watching over you” as her last ever words to him, which occurs in the timeline presented in the opening minutes of the show, somewhere between putting Baby Sammy to bed and Mary waking up to the baby monitor. It hurts so bad because that episode is the most Destiel episode of all the pre-Cas episodes, seeing as it sets Dean up on his inevitable connection to the Divine, his full on scepticism of it which is most important in 4x02 when he’s coming to terms with Cas’s existence. While the phrase is flipped on its head with horrendous dramatic irony in 5x13 when we see Mary uttering it again after discovering the entire full scope of Heaven’s plans for Sam and Dean (finally – Michael fills in all the final missing details in his speech to Dean), Mary’s obliviousness to the plan after her memory wipe is one of the most painful plot-related moments of the show. However, by the end of the apocalypse in 5x22, when Cas is revealed to have been resurrected and heals Dean and brings Bobby back, Dean can only look at him in awe and ask if he is God. Finally it’s clear that he is the angel actually watching over Dean, well beyond all the darkness and horror of the apocalypse and what was  _planned_ , and Cas sticks to this from then on. By 12x01 Mary gets to find out she was  _right_ , when she meets Cas via seeing him latch onto Dean with a desperate hug and Dean tells her upfront that this is an angel, and of course for her that’s mere hours after she told four year old Dean these once last words to him before, in terms of her experience of the plot, being transported forwards 30 years to face the fall out of her life and choices.

For sheer, painful, beautiful hindsight, that one off-screen moment we only found out about a season and a half later, makes any rewatch start with Destiel and Cas embedded in the very opening minute as we’re still innocently meeting this family.

Also, it sets up Dean’s character in the broad strokes which complement his story to Cas’s so well, as Cas’s early arc mirrors Dean’s season 1 arc, allowing them to bond closely with a lot of unspoken understanding of each other, so any moment where Dean shows unthinking loyalty to his family and the Job etc is all waiting to be plundered for Cas’s later arc.

* * *

**Season 2:**  This one deals so much with immediate family stuff and no mytharc except for John and Azazel that there’s not much to write about. I’d give it a 3/10 – bonus points for being an intense Dean episode and him invisibly hanging out watching his family which mirrors the most intense Cas episode ever where he hangs out invisibly watching them all, though of course to very different ends. 

Likewise, Dean losing his rag at John but not being heard mirrors Cas’s later season 5 & 6 arc of losing faith in God, talking into the sky and not being heard. John trades himself for Dean but doesn’t even tell him that he did it, or truly  _why_  he did it; again mirrored in the way God persistently resurrects Cas without explanation, leaving Cas to do what he thinks is right while being haunted and traumatised by their fathers’ mysterious actions. In the final run of episodes from 11x20 to 23, God’s motives are somewhat explored (although he remains as frustrating and unknowable as ever, in some ways), and between the way Dean relates to him and the way Cas cold-shoulders him to the end of the universe, and God even telling Dean that he’s mixing him up with John in his mind (which is an incredibly fair assessment, as God has always been used, narratively, as a John Winchester mirror, so he’s ducking that responsibility of being used for fatherly catharsis even when it was probably his responsibility to sit there and take it :P) of course all bonds Dean and Cas some more. 

So lots of early roots to things between their characters, despite the relative lack of direct parallels, except for a very dark addition to the “angels are watching over you” motif with the comment from the doctor on Dean’s miraculous awakening, of course in that moment referring to Azazel.

* * *

**Season 3:**  Again, little direct influence. Probably a 2/10 despite the fact this is the episode of emotionally facing the consequences of Dean selling his soul, especially for Sam (and to a lesser extent Bobby) while Dean is in a dangerous emotional spiral because of it. This plotline now takes him directly to Cas, but the focus here was again on immediate emotional aftereffects, Dean’s coping (or not), and it was all very nervous, anxious and immediate, especially with bigger problems to deal with.

Interesting commentary on Dean’s sexuality is included in the episode, starting with his threesome in the opening and ending with the deadly sin Lust coming for him but being easily resisted and defeated, despite the appearance from the opening part of the episode that Dean is consumed in sin while thinking “fuck it, I’m going to Hell anyway”. There’s a much better exploration of this in 5x14, and I think the ongoing theme of Dean’s emotional emptiness is addressed periodically through the show, as the season 5 exploration bleeds into the Lisa arc, which in season 6 is thoroughly upended as something Dean desires/needs, rather being more of a dream; of course Lisa is introduced the very next episode from 3x01 and so I believe part of this exploration is “readying” Dean for the next episode, in terms of asking what he really desires, displaying first random hook ups of an increasingly wild nature, but they have no actual temptation to him so he can resist Lust. This leads to him taking a close up look at what he would have in suburbia and how that is denied to him because he will be dead in a year, making it a literal dream of his (as 3x10 shows). This of course all goes on the back burner after Dean loses Lisa forever and decides with asking Sam never to talk to him about her and Ben again, I’m sure never to ever be so stupid as to get involved in that sort of life again. From there, the storyline picks back up with tentative questioning in Carver era of what Dean really wants or could have. His confession in 10x16 suggests he wants to try something else, and season 11 has many lines about starting a relationship with someone he already knows, someone in the life, what’s it like settling down with a hunter, etc. And of course Mildred telling him outright he’s already pining for someone. I see this all as a fairly direct line to the exploration of what Dean wants, romantically, and this was an arc begun in season 3 to torment Dean about what he couldn’t have with Lisa, so, again, I see the little roots of that in 3x01 with exploring what Dean  _doesn’t_  want. In this respect, the long-term emotional arc for Dean vs romance that by season 7 or 8 began to clearly line up with the main Destiel arc, begins back in 3x01.

* * *

**Season 4:**  Wellll…

As I said the actual narrative Destiel stuff really kind of starts in 4x02… I mean, like, is there even anything in this episode??

Okay, yeah, no, I can’t keep this up for 3 paragraphs. 10/10, OTP meets in Hell, reconnects later on Earth after quirky misunderstandings, truly look into each other’s eyes for the first time, and… okay, there’s a lot more going on there, but you get the picture.

4x01 is structured around the mystery of who pulled Dean out of Hell, and though there are several episodes  _about_  Cas, there aren’t many built around Cas entirely in the same way. Even with all the scenes where characters reunite and we learn the first hints of what Sam did in the summer, with the quiet Ruby reveal, and the horrifying powers!Sam reveal, the episode starts with Dean crawling out of his box, and ends with the whole conversation with Cas. Cas may still be the mysterious Castiel who even when they talk to him is full of purpose, yet only a messenger for God; declaring that he was the one who gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition is almost matter of fact for him, part of the job, just following orders, and it takes several more episodes for Castiel to truly crack and tell Dean he has doubts and to show the side of him to Dean that makes him Cas.

But despite this and despite perhaps original writing intention to see where this went and not to make Cas as important as he ends up being, it’s clear with hindsight how inexorably bonded they are from the start. This is about Dean and it’s about Cas, and it’s about them finding each other. Cas attempts to make contact – innocently, we discover, just to say hello and give his message to Dean… Dean of course discovers he’s been branded by this strange creature and is horrified by the interest it might have in him because of the terrifying window-shattering encounters, and fearful of what it means; even discovering it’s “just” angels is no comfort for him. Again, delved into much more in the following episode, even titled as a plea to God from Dean. But when Dean says, “get the hell out of here, there’s no such thing,” that’s already calling on the long established arc of Dean vs faith (starting IN Faith) to explain how he feels about angels: this has all been set up for him in a long time coming way, and here’s the pay off.

This is of course paralleled to Sam and the demonic and dark, compared to stacking Dean up against the Divine. (The season 6 box art is ridiculous, but when I first saw it I knew immediately how it was true, showing Dean with a sort of divine self-righteous glow to him, and Sam smirking into the camera with a serpent on his shoulder – and I’d only seen the first 3 seasons years ago at that point.) And one of the elements of 4x01 is paralleling this quite directly by the conversation in the café of Sam and Ruby working together, vs an angel dropping by to tell Dean specifically that he has work to do because God commanded it. Sam and Ruby are introduced (with hindsight that it was Ruby) with a sexual element and the paralleled erotic interest Sam and Dean have in their respective guides to either side of the battle is a constant theme of season 4. Of course in 4x09/10 it’s broken up by Anna’s appearance so that Dean can have a romantic/sexual encounter with an angel without it being Cas (though that handprint touching, of course, somehow pulls Cas into the Dean/Cas/Anna threeway dynamic basically all by itself… It was a subplot they possibly played with a little based on Cas and Anna’s interactions in 4x10/16 but ultimately nothing ever was suggested about it more than a few looks/touches, so I keep that thought very much to the subtext the show was suggesting/writing about season 4 and not to my understanding of what the characters have experienced/felt…)

4x01 also has tons of erotic language around Dean and Cas in the time before Dean knows who Cas is – I’m not sure exactly what the intent was here, but Dean uses this sort of language all the time to potential threats, so it’s not weird in itself that Dean uses highly sexualised (violent) language about Cas for most of the episode when he suspects he’s a badass mofo demon etc etc:

> DEAN  
> It was like a demon just yanked me out. Or rode me out.

-

> PAMELA  
> And I need to touch something our mystery monster touched.
> 
> PAMELA slides her hand along DEAN’S inner thigh. He jumps.
> 
> DEAN  
> Whoa. Well, he didn’t touch me there.

-

> DEMON WAITRESS  
> So you get to just stroll out of the pit, huh? Tell me. What makes you so special?
> 
> DEAN  
> I like to think it’s because of my perky nipples.

-

> DEAN  
> But don’t come crawling to me when they show up on your front doorstep with some Vaseline and a fire hose.

-

> DEAN  
> Bobby, whatever this is, whatever it wants, it’s after me. That much we know, right? I’ve got no place to hide. I can either get caught with my pants down again, or we can make our stand.

The mystery monster that saved Dean is coded as male from fairly early on despite no one knowing for sure and yet Dean uses this language about it – I think this is more of a discussion of Dean’s personality and perhaps his Hell trauma as well, particularly as he was expecting it to be a really bad demon and he had literally only just got out from under Alastair’s tutelage… Anyway, it puts that in the text about Cas from Dean, which while it has no bearing on their relationship, is interesting (especially with the Pamela moment also sexualising Cas’s interest in Dean again in a kind of creepy boundary-ignoring way which probably only passes because Dean and Pamela both express attraction to each other before this moment so the pass on him between  _them_  is consensual flirting even if the implication about Cas is not).

Because, of course, the parallel between Sam and Ruby (for example, even after she leaves the hotel room where it seemed obvious they were hooking up, Dean picked up a bra clearly belonging to her to wave accusingly at Sam). Though they don’t talk about it later when it’s revealed she was Ruby, it’s clear from how we re-meet her that she and Sam were hooking up. Though this language about Cas is very crude, it’s fairly consistent through the episode that Dean expresses sexual anxiety towards what he’d just been through. Cas as an angel in this respect defuses it entirely and makes him safe and comforting in comparison – he may smoulder and invade Dean’s space and talk inches from his face, but unlike the villains in the show he never once exudes sexual  _threat_ towards Dean. This instant defusing sort of disconnects Cas entirely from the monster Dean was imagining up until that point, but stuff like the implication of Cas watching Dean sleep for the first time in the second time he comes to try say hello in the hotel (the same room Sam and Ruby were hooking up in) and the fact the words were about Cas anyway, still also at least tangentially open up the idea of the beginning of season 4’s erotic subtext between Dean and Cas.

Basically, between everything, it hands up the ship on a plate.

* * *

**Season 5:**  This is the aftermath of Cas’s sacrifice to rebel against Heaven, for this side of the story, and as such Cas spends most of the episode presumed dead, and only swoops in to save Dean AND Sam together at the end of the episode, ranking it very low in actual Destiel interaction or for setting up or furthering any story between them. I’d probably give it a 4/10 for actual Destiel content because the implications are very muted this time. Dean worries about Cas a few times, is visibly upset by his death at Chuck’s house, and there’s amusing framing in their actual conversation which is one of those ones where Sam’s in the room, kinda, but the conversation is all Dean and Cas. I always appreciate those moments.

The thing I found most interesting about it, and this is really just stealing from [my rewatch](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/126775089568/spn-hellatus-rewatch-5x01-or-its-not-a-party), the very coded interaction between Dean and Zach, carefully discussing Cas’s death and what he meant to Dean and what Dean meant to him, in very few words. Most of it is based on that tiny moment where Zach casually runs a finger through the exploded-Cas-goo which is making a very pointed gesture to Dean about the loss he just incurred fighting against him.

To quote my rewatch:

> _ZACHARIAH  
>  You’re upset._
> 
> _DEAN  
>  Yeah. A little. You sons of bitches jump-started judgement day!_

_Zach calls it “playtime” which I think refers to the whole escapade since Cas zapped him away, and then accuses Dean of being upset. We’ve literally just seen what moves Dean to near tears, but he deliberately switches focus to it being about the obvious plot stuff for apocalypse in general, ignoring any Cas-specific mourning he’s still doing, because, well, he DOES have these better reasons to be specifically angry with Zach._

_Then Zach, after blaming Sam for the apocalypse in his “fun” way, says:_

> _ZACHARIAH  
>  ‘Cause like it or not it’s Apocalypse Now._
> 
> _It’s right after “like it or not” we get this little split second moment:_

_where he casually examines some of the more obvious Cas splatter around the kitchen, making a point to demonstrate the loss and that he’s aware that mess is all Cas._

_I mean talk about rubbing it in._

_It’s so brief, but hey, it’s Zach making a point he knew exactly what Cas died for (and apparently how futile it was since his dialogue is basically saying “lol lol lol and it happened anyway would suck to be Cas if he wasn’t painted all over this room!”) and how much he knows that will hurt Dean to point it out again for kicks._

There’s also “learned that from my friend Cas, you son of a bitch” which again I rationalised as though he learned it from Anna, he’s  _specifically_  pointing out to Zach that he’s doing it because of Cas’s rebellion, and that even if Cas is dead, Dean has learned from him and will honour his memory and keep on fighting for what Cas died for, etc. Which I think is a great demonstration of their closeness.

However on surface level stuff this episode is extremely sparse, so it scores fairly lowly.

* * *

**Season 6:**  Again, Cas is off-screen for the entire episode, and this is the beginning of “wtf is wrong with Cas” so the mentions are very brief and that he’s not answering, as part of the slow build that takes us to the twist at the end of the season of  _why_  he is not answering, which is good to establish early since again with hindsight that arc is completely Destiel, and the answer to the immediate questions they have about Cas are only answered in 6x20.

However, for one perfect moment I am giving this episode an entire 7/10, [for Dean’s subconscious dressed up as Azazel calling Cas “sugar”](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/154950394051/soluscheese-601-exile-on-main-st).

This is one of those moments where the villain speaks for them to say something suggestive about Dean and Cas, and Azazel has previously loved using sexual intimidation against Dean (while in both John and Samuel), again as in 4x01 contrasting Cas directly against a bad threat as the alternative, much sweeter, but again still in suggestive terms.

The kicker is that Dean is hallucinating the entire thing, and so he’s exposed and vulnerable to reveals like this, and I think is one of the few times (and I can only think of the deleted bar scene in 10x23 where he called Cas his admirer) where we have him in this state and he slips and reveals his love for Cas while we have him at a disadvantage. (I mean it’d be really horrible to use against him as evidence if we weren’t casual observers, but no one else but Dean knows “Azazel” said this, so it’s our little secret :P)

Also, to go back to 3x01, this episode is both the beginning and the end of Lisa as the idealised dream love interest/endgame, a sort of stepping stone on that path I charted out about what Dean truly wants, and so in the long run also contributes to Dean’s mindset about it all; he is already regretting it from one Djinn attack, and his sudden horror about what might happen to Lisa and Ben and thinking he was stupid to even try prompts Lisa to the “best year of my life” speech… But of course it’s already beginning to unravel, and it’s “normal life” vs “hunting life” and the coding as a whole of their world is fairly queer coded in its approach, as we’ve discussed in many metas. I think the explicitly queer story in 11x19 probably is the best thing to look at – Dean asking “what’s it like settling down with a hunter” to Jesse and Cesar is the end result of a long journey of him leaving behind his chance to live this life, the generic suburban and surface level heterosexual dream. (Which, I think the El Sol and djinn aspects of this episode serve as a mirror to Dean’s approach to living with Lisa and Ben as a whole, as I have written much longer metas about :P)

* * *

**Season 7:**  I’ll confess, I don’t actually know where this episode ends because I always watch Dean going to the reservoir and collecting the trenchcoat as a part of it, so assuming it ends on the Leviathan!Cas reveal, let’s give it a slightly more conservative 8/10 for Dean’s angry car fixing and radio listening, the start of the Dean x anime porn, Dean’s season 7 drinking escalating rapidly even from the end of season 6 drinking, and the overall air of heartbreak and trying to get over an ex that this episode was loaded with. It’s 10/10 the way I watch it though.

I think the best moment is probably Dean shutting off the TV when the lady is describing Cas and gets as far as “attractive” before Dean has heard enough. Most of his actions drip with betrayal and hurt, and in a way he’s so easy to analyse like this I don’t feel like I have to go very deep.

From Cas’s POV it’s much more complicated. The episode starts where 6x22 ended, and Godstiel, the filter through which Cas is coming now, reveals his motives to them:

> CASTIEL:   
> Stop. What’s the point if you don’t mean it? You fear me. Not love, not respect, just fear.

We knew from 6x20 that Cas had got himself into such a mess out of love for Dean, and the following episodes continued to follow that. I would say from 6x20 onwards the show can’t really pretend Cas  _doesn’t_  love Dean deeply, in whatever way they’re presenting it depending on writer… Now Cas can reveal that it was about love, but through this horrible filter where Godstiel is asking them to bow to him and love him as a  _God_  not as Cas. He WANTS their love, but he’s consumed by the power and the leviathans inside him who twist him to violence and destruction and so he demands it in this Godstiel ego trip, and after the betrayal and all, where there’s no chance of earning it fairly. He is at the absolute worst part of his journey, and must make it to the end of the season, where Dean can choose him on his own terms and express his love and respect of Cas back in the way he knows how – and when Cas isn’t demanding it.

Of course there’s also the “I am totally indifferent to sexual orientation” line, where again Cas is speaking for God, but could be again a commentary on Cas and his lack of human biases and understandings of orientation. There’s the Death conversation where Cas mentions his “nostalgia” for Dean… That line especially makes it clear on Cas’s side that still that “more profound bond” with Dean is affecting who he’s talking about and what love he’s asking for when he speaks more generally.

For the main plot of season 7 though, Cas’s attempt to apologise, and then saying,

> CASTIEL:   
> I’m gonna find some way to redeem myself to you.

sets up the main arc for season 7 when it comes to Cas’s need for redemption towards Dean; how he comes back to save Sam, and how he and Dean making peace at the end of the season is the final puzzle piece that allows them to defeat the big bad their miscommunication brought into the world. I like to think season 7 ends on a power of love moment for Dean and Cas, anyway. Again, hindsight is important, not just for seeing 7x01 in the light of the whole story of season 7 rather than the depressing feeling they were setting Cas up to be killed off for good, but for knowing Cas runs away in a way that in 8x02 he justifies as again being entirely out of love for Dean, to draw the Leviathan away from him (I assume with the full confidence that Dean Fucking Winchester can handle a pack of gnarly gorilla wolves…)

* * *

**Season 8:** Again, another season opener where Cas is missing, and only spoken about briefly while setting up other elements of the story, and the big Destiel kicker is revealed later on in the season – maybe only one episode later, but that relegates it to an emotional subplot rather than something urgently needed to be set up in the opening (I believe this was a season Misha was a “guest star” in still, a far cry from “AND Misha Collins” as the credits for season 12 now tell us :P).

As an individual episode it has a lot of the things which make season 8 a comparatively un-Destiel season  _narratively_  for me, even while on the emotional level there’s a lot going on. For example, it opens on campers in the wilderness who are Dean and Cas mirrors, so the very first thing on screen in a way is something you can write Destiel meta about. But Cas is kept at arm’s length through Dean’s unwillingness to talk about it, and the establishing of Benny as a character, and the issues with Sam… To be honest it’s lucky to scrape a 5/10 from me.

I do think this one moment where Dean shuts down the discussion is worth those 4.5 points though:

> SAM  
> What about Cas? Was he there?
> 
> DEAN walks a few steps away and speaks with his back to SAM.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, Cas didn’t make it.
> 
> SAM  
> What exactly does that mean?
> 
> DEAN  
> Something happened to him down there. Things got pretty hairy towards the end, and he… just let go.
> 
> SAM  
> So Cas is dead? You saw him die?
> 
> DEAN  
> I saw enough.
> 
> SAM  
> So, then what, you’re not sure?
> 
> DEAN  
> [turning back to SAM] I said I saw enough, Sam.
> 
> SAM  
> Right. Dean, I’m sorry.

Dean not wanting to talk about anything is clearly established, as, like with when he got out of Hell he didn’t want to share that trauma yet, because he wasn’t willing to speak about it. This obviously sets up that there’s more to tell about Cas, although this is only a passing conversation… As with 5x01 and 6x01, the mentions or suggestions of Cas include enough to make a strong Destiel reading, this time about Dean’s grief over leaving Cas behind in a place where even if he wasn’t killed by Leviathan, he may as well be dead for all the chance Dean ever has of seeing him again. This is the mind set behind the ridiculous Gothic romance return of Cas as visions on the side of the road and in a stormy night; the sense of ridiculous elevated love and grief. Dean’s emotional response to the question is very strong, literally something he can’t face Sam about, and that carries his own guilt over it.

However it is one small moment in a larger episode, so judging just 8x01, I have to score it lowly.

* * *

**Season 9:**  Oh no, Cas. Oh no. This episode is much better for drawing the Destiel plot of the season into itself as a starting point, so I’ll give it maybe 9/10 for making me emo about it.

The first time we see Dean for real he’s conflicted between staying at Sam’s side, while glancing at the TV with the angel fall news story, showing in silent storytelling that he’s picked Sam over Cas (as per the end of season 8 meltdown they shared, including lines about picking each other over everything). Now Dean’s torn about this, because he cares about Cas too. He prays to Cas for Sam, but then drops that and gets personal and forgives Cas. The distinction between the two prayers, one personally for Cas and one to angels at large, especially with the “I need you here” echoes the “need” subplot of season 8 and shows Dean has an emotional need for Cas compared to the help he begs off the angels.

Gadreel also shows up saying he knows about Dean and Cas, grouping them in together like one unit, and uses a statement of belief in Cas as evidence of his trustworthiness.

Dean later refuses to give Cas’s location to the angels (though he doesn’t know it himself) when they come to get him over the open prayer.

On Cas’s side, he feels immensely alone and guilty. His first motive is to phone Dean, but he also wants to help the angels and when he tries to put helping Dean first, Hael knocks him out and drags him with her, symbolic of the duty to helping the angels always dragging Cas away from where he wants to be – that is, with Dean, who needs him. Again, immensely symbolic for all the stuff that keeps them apart over the next season and a half before Hannah finally lets go and Cas has no more obligation put on him by Heaven.

Dean and Cas’s phonecall is complicated, but both of them are concerned about the other, and Sam; again, Dean gets Cas’s trust for “Ezekiel” as a motivator to trust him in turn, which is probably exactly what Gadreel would have hoped for if he knew Dean and Cas were able to talk at this point. Dean is more concerned about Cas getting to safety, telling him to go to the Bunker, and Cas is more concerned about getting to Dean and helping him. After the phonecall he refuses to go with Hael, and it’s the motivation he has to choose Dean over Heaven (or, well, this one random angel) and for the plot to be like “nope, you can’t do that yet” and hit him around the head and drag him off.

Overall I find season 9 one of the most Destiel-y seasons after season 7, so it doesn’t surprise me that there’s so much to read into this episode I’ve barely scraped the surface of what I consider is hidden in here in their motivations and actions. This is getting really long though so –

* * *

**Season 10:**  Oh no, Cas, OH NO. Considering one of the previews was Cas lying in the bed, bare knee out all pining damsel mode fully initiated, while his beloved was off running around in debauchery with another lover or… like… five… I can’t  _not_  give this episode the 10/10 for the narrative and Cas’s abject misery about Dean. I was there. I lived it. 

On Dean’s side of course we only get the Drowley love triangle stuff in full swing, howling at the moon, whatever. He makes no mention of Cas and no mention is made to him for the entire escapade until Cas is wrapped around him from behind; I think an intentional commentary on Cas being overlooked… Anyway, however far you think that things went between Dean and Crowley as his replacement for everything he cared about in his life, narratively it was clear that Crowley had “won” and taken Dean – he crows as much to Sam over the phone, but the fact Dean has been taken from Cas is clear too. Especially from Cas’s reaction to it.

Cas, meanwhile, is dragged into his own side of the complicated web of love triangles. Like season 4 opened setting up Dean x Cas vs Sam x Ruby (I think more as a character study, as I was saying about the season 6 poster) this one poses Dean x Crowley vs Cas x Hannah. Hannah represents, as Hael did, the obligation to Heaven. While Cas is naked-pining (this is a thing that Cas does and we can’t forget it), Hannah shows up and drags him out of his symbolically depressing room (that I still have a still from Wanek as part of my desktop rotation :P) and onto a pointless task to send home the angels who Cas  _most_  identifies with. The ones who want to live on Earth in peace and enjoy human things, and experience the planet they once watched over up close. Cas believes in Daniel’s philosophy deeply, as it’s the same one he’s always felt. There’s heavy-handed references to Cas’s philosophising in 6x20, with the fact the angel is fishing. There’s a real “I wish Edlund was here” vibe about it all :P Cas has to “sacrifice” that part of himself for the obligation to Heaven, and this is the super depressing answer to where Cas was at the end of 9x23, with his “I just want to be an angel” final words, and the fact he lost Dean, in whatever way, weighing heavily on him with Metatron’s final taunting about how Cas (who had previously diagnosed as being in love…………with humanity) had done everything that he’d done just for Dean – who Metatron had just killed. (Seriously those gifs of Cas staring at that bloody angel blade with tears in his eyes haunted me for a whole summer since that was my welcome to fandom >.>)

Now in response to this, Cas is adrift, and miserable, and in the end his talking with Hannah leads him to saying something which actually made me jerk back and smack my head on the wall on first viewing, so thanks for the mild concussion, Carver, and fuck you :P

> CASTIEL  
> Well, perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothing but chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.
> 
> HANNAH  
> But t-those are human things.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Yes.

Hearing Cas talk about love, even indirectly like this, sets the tone, reminds us that he’s been stated to be in love (with Humanity)… There was a weighty pause here too before Cas said “love” and if I remember correctly the camera angle even changed a little to focus closer on him before he said it. It was an important moment and underlined the importance of love to Cas… Of course, in an episode where he was presented as heartbroken over Dean.

* * *

**Season 11:** This episode was fairly in damage control mode, both plot-wise, and between characters. Sam and Dean argue about what they do and who they are and how they hunt. Dean has only just got the Mark off and has little time to adjust because they’re right back in it with the Zompires. This episode more than many really only works as a two-parter with 11x02; Dabb set up all the themes and important foreshadowing for season 11 while Carver’s final episode came across fairly muted, and full of thematic stuff, and things that needed to be said. 

For the Destiel side of things, of course things that were needed to be said were said, but the real interesting part was in 11x02 with exploration of so much more about Cas as well as more than perfunctory care for Dean, but an interesting moment of him again being torn going to find Cas, and helping Amara (and of course losing out to Amara as it was the start of the season and we had to wait until late in the season for Cas to win out against her pull). Cas barely features as a character in this episode as he’s under the attack dog spell (as a lazy cliffhanger from season 10), and Dean is massively distracted, so again I have to give it a bare minimum of saying what has to be said: 4/10

The conversation does contain mutual concern, so 2 points each for that:

> CASTIEL:   
> I’m…I’m okay.
> 
> DEAN:   
> You don’t sound okay.
> 
> CASTIEL:   
> Dean, I am fine. Besides, what I have, you can’t help me.
> 
> DEAN:   
> What do you mean, what you have?

On Dean’s side, and

> CASTIEL:   
> Now, you tell me – the Mark …
> 
> DEAN:   
> Oh, really? You’re worried about me after everything that I’ve –
> 
> CASTIEL:   
> Dean, is it gone?
> 
> DEAN:   
> Yes. I’m good. I mean, I’m not great.
> 
> CASTIEL:   
> Makes two of us. 

On Cas’s, accompanied by the most relieved look Cas has ever had, I think :P

This is good as a baseline, for re-establishing that they care about each other (and in a more mutually healthy way – though they both try and duck out of talking about themselves so they’re not GREAT at communication, at least both are equally free to worry about the other, and as the episode is at least trying to re-establish some things and set up the dynamics again after season 10, it’s such a relief for us too to see Dean free of the Mark, that even when they’re both in high pressure situations with little time to talk, they can have this moment. It also was the first in a long time of Dean and Cas phone calls – over season 9 it became a regular occurrence, but Sam fielded Cas and then secretly worked with him all of season 10, to the point where in some episode at some point Dean finds Cas calling Sam’s phone and it’s a huge conflict of interest dramatic moment that raises Dean’s suspicions sky high about the working behind his back. So Dean and Cas sharing a phone call was a nice moment reminding us of better times and of course in 11x04 Cas on the phone is used brilliantly as one of the cuter Destiel moments of all time.

Anyway, again, it’s not much and the other half of the two-parter is much more of a breather episode compared to this, which explores all the characters much more deeply, so this only really gets points as set up for better things to come, unfortunately. This episode isn’t bad, it’s just… there. :P

* * *

**Season 12:**  Or, the episode with a Destiel hug, a meet the parent moment, pie, that thing with pushing the car, and Cas being accepted unconditionally as family like it’s no big deal, even by Mary returning from the dead and in a whole lot of shock about dealing with all this. If she just rolls with the fact Dean has a guardian angel hanging out with him and snuggling him on first meeting and buying her coffee, then, well… that’s apparently what the future is? 10/10 for confused but accepting mom.

… We’re still trying to get a read on Dabb era as a whole and I’m not entirely sure he’s nervously over-done the pie thing entirely while relying on his usual trick (I watched 6x04 yesterday with Bobby and that doomed peach cobbler and honestly. It’s like season 12 in a nutshell :P) but let me tell you, the man laid out how he likes Cas plain as day and it’s beautiful. We’re getting like 6 episodes from his POV…

Like 11x01, this episode was a great deal of setting cards on the table about how this season was going to go, but in this case mostly emotional. The whole Mary thing was extremely important to get right and it was fair enough that a lot of attention was placed on her. But Dabb did his thing breaking time and space to make sure wherever he punted Cas to in 11x23, he got him back to the Bunker early on in the episode so that he could be at Dean’s side through pretty much everything after the initial urgent “hi mom” conversation. I think this was incredibly important when it came to the “outside eyes” looking in on this. Mary meets Cas before one of her own sons. And Dean and Cas know each other and clearly love each other, and Cas endears himself to Mary quickly. The message is very clear about accepting him as part of the family, and I think Cas is the first person Mary opens up to, when they’re getting coffee, as he can relate to her experience in a way that even Dean can’t as he’s died and returned after only 4 months, and as I just went over, the manner of his resurrection was the most alarming thing when he had to adjust, while to Dean the fact Mary is back has an easy answer (Amara did it) and the thought there’s no strings attached (it was a gift) and so the only thing they have to worry about is adapting Mary to the modern world, in which case Cas as a species outsider, is well suited for helping her through this, and that small moment foreshadows their more important conversation down the line and decisions to leave, which were jointly the cause of all the emotional turmoil in the first half of the season – with Dean getting over Mary leaving sooner than Cas, since they went to get pancakes and bacon with Mary at the end of 12x06, but in 12x08 he’s still snapping at Cas…

And of course the point being that 12x01 makes such a pleasant, happy baseline that when things start to go wrong, we have a recent episode to refer to where Dean and Cas were solid and reasonably happy. After all, even with Sam kidnapped, Dean’s almost  _zen_  about it through 12x01, angry Taken-type speech to Toni aside, he copes very well with the comfort of a car full of both his mom and angel. When the disruption to his happiness comes, again with hindsight it’s even easier to read Dean’s care for Cas as romantic, as that old love triangle resurfaces to fuel Dean’s bitterness at Cas leaving, painting the start of the season as almost idyllic in comparison. A lot of deeper analysis comes later in the season prompted by Dabb’s gleeful love of pie and other food symbolism but in this episode the pie is on display but seemingly not for sale, a warning of both how Mary being back won’t be quite the apple pie life Dean wants (2x20 as an age old warning of the same) but also in its connection to Dean’s romantic arc, also has a long-standing symbolism tying it to that same arc I described in relation to 3x01 and 6x01 – in 5x22 Sam even expressly calls that the “apple pie life”… With the pie in this episode appearing in close proximity to Cas, but not bought or even seemingly for sale, and with the pie’s family meaning all shaken up and Dean struggling if he wants the pie or not, its presence in the episode is serving as a symbolic omen of some sort.

Since we don’t have any more context to go on without the rest of the season to analyse and the ends of all these arcs to explore how they were set up here in full, I’ll just finish up by saying it was just so nice to have an episode with Dean and Cas fighting side by side, and his obvious inclusion in the family up to the end, where he gets to ride shotgun with Dean (also established by Dabb in 8x08 as a prize seat). I came out of this episode feeling utterly pandered to by someone who did it in a very knowing way.

That top score was probably bought, tbh.

* * *

In conclusion:

1 (joint):      Season 12 (10/10)

                   Season 10

                   Season 4

4:                Season 9 (9/10)

5:                Season 7 (8/10)

6:                Season 6 (7/10)

7 (joint):      Season 8 (5/10)

                   Season 1

9 (joint):      Season 11 (4/10)

                   Season 5

11:              Season 2 (3/10)

12:              Season 3 (2/10)

I don’t even know how to conclude this. Except that I’d usually rank season 3 dead last in anything out of spite for that time it got the show cancelled and it disappeared from the universe for 3 years (Um. It’s hard to casually follow what’s up with American media from this country, in my defence :P), so that’s not a surprise. :P

* * *

 [nerdylittleshit](http://nerdylittleshit.tumblr.com/post/155549770952)

Ok, trust Lizzy to find Destiel in really anything. A few things:

1) I like how you end up 4x01 with basically saying it is impossible not to ship them after this episode, because this is how I always felt as well.

2) Even though we had completely different themes on this round of the meta scavenger hunt, I feel like we both summarised 10x01 with “But those are human things”. Also the lack of Cas and demon!Dean interaction or in Dean’s case even mentioning Cas: I feel like demon!Dean without his usually filter would of course say something sexual in regard to Cas, something even the most casual viewer couldn’t ignore and what would have been the only way for demon!Dean to stay in character (considering that Drowley was a thing that actually happened). So the only way not to go there was for Dean not to mention Cas at all/their only interaction to be the grace-hug. 

3) I think overall that the second episodes of the season are real Destiel goldmines, as they, as you pointed out, set up the emotional arc. So thank God, you chooe the season openers instead or this would have been even more longer (just kidding, I like to read your long ramblings :-*)

* * *

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/155551541698/hold-my-cup-of-tea-round-two)

Yeah, on point 2 - that goes well with what I was saying about season 6… And the deleted scene at the end of season 10 that mirrored the OPENING of season 10. Since it was deleted we never really dug into it too much except for obvious quick surface level analysis (I mean, OUR surface level :P) but if it had made it to the finished episode (and putting it on the DVD at least means we see it)… I quite like the idea of poking at it for the sort of negative space that Cas wasn’t in the Howling at the Moon escapade at all, not one word… But the deleted scene mirrors Dean and Crowley at the bar so neatly from the start, Crowley even asking Dean to come back and work with him… Taking season 10 as a whole PLUS deleted scene, you could look at it reflecting on the start of the season with the emptiness of Cas there… He was a spectre of Dean’s guilt at hurting Cas and while Cas was the one person Dean didn’t hurt at the end of 9, he was the one who was most compromised at the start of season 10, and doing his whole naked-pining thing.

Unfortunately it’s just turning 1am so I derailed the rest of this thought imagining naked-pining!Cas appearing as a vision to demon!Dean at the bar in 10x01

heart: broken  
robe: on  
dick: out

**_I am forcibly removed from this scene’s subtext_ **


	13. Dean is the Centre of the Universe Nonsense

I’m starting to come to terms with the fact I’m neeever going to be able to adequately explain my Dean is the Centre of the Universe theory, but I’m scrapping the last draft I tried to write about this and starting over in light of 12x01 and the funniest moment of horror on the whole show.

  
  


The whole pointless theory has been something that’s amused me about this show for so long I can’t even remember when I began thinking it…

It actually ended up canon as far as I’m concerned around hereabouts in canon and so I’ve been harping on it all summer:

> CHUCK:   
> If my plan doesn’t work, then humans will step up. You, Sam, others that are the chosen will have to find a way. It’s why I saved you years ago. You’re the firewall between light and darkness. 

And rewatching the Christmas episode this summer I went on a convoluted journey through Sam giving Dean the amulet (which only with season 11 hindsight we know for sure was the real deal and that little bit more cosmically significant than we may have accounted for previously and I am starting to think ended up with Sam or Bobby through divine means to get it to the right place) - what interested me was that it was “meant” for John, but ended up with Dean. Likewise, John goes to hell but escapes before he breaks, and it’s Dean who goes to hell and becomes the “Righteous Man” needed for the apparent prophecy - and Dean took the amulet with him:

([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D60%26pid%3D22701%23top_display_media&t=OTZiODIwZmQ1NzZkMmUxMWVhZWIyNjYxMzcxMmIxN2E1MDU1ZWEyZSxyT0NpUjZ0RQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F151804512793%2Felizabethrobertajones-im-starting-to-come-to&m=1)) And then of course we have 4x01 and 4x02 where Cas is like, “God commanded it” which I assume is what Chuck was referring to, as well as Dean’s crisis of faith (i.e. having to have some) the next episode being set up for his dynamic actually meeting God at long last.

All the destiny stuff in season 4 & 5 work with this, the way Dean rejects it or tries to, and of course it culminates in him completely shaping the events of the apocalpse, and blah blah everything you could say about Dean in that episode rolling up and changing events just by his presence etc. But let’s get to the point, since we already have one item tying Dean to this on his father’s side, what about…

> CHUCK:  
> …because this 1967 Chevrolet Impala would turn out to be the most important car – no, the most important  _object_  – in pretty much the whole universe.

And I think if Dean’s had this sort of narrative significance all his life (and 11x04, Baby, seemed to prove it to me before it went “canon” by the car bending reality to get Dean all the ingredients he needed to beat the monster, spinning the events of the universe around his needs with uncanny neatness) then doesn’t it just seem perfect that he has this strange power over the narrative of their universe because he was conceived inside the car that he shares his powers with… :P 

* * *

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/151804512793/elizabethrobertajones-im-starting-to-come-to)

 

[he traveled in time to paradoxically pick the car out for himself](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/he-traveled-in-time-to-paradoxically-pick-the-car-out-for-himself) [so that he could be conceived in the back seat and then spend the rest of his life taking car of Baby while she took care of him…](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/so-that-he-could-be-conceived-in-the-back-seat-and-then-spend-the-rest-of-his-life-taking-car-of-Baby-while-she-took-care-of-him...) [great now i am having feelings about a car again](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/great-now-i-am-having-feelings-about-a-car-again) (via [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg)) ([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D63%26pid%3D24132%23top_display_media&t=YjdkNDRmZWE4OWY1MjU2NjMxOWQwMzllMTgwOWRjMjMzNzliNTliNixyT0NpUjZ0RQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F151804512793%2Felizabethrobertajones-im-starting-to-come-to&m=1) - image)

Aaaargh this is why I hate this theory so much :P Who can even put all these puzzle pieces together at once?? 

* * *

More grappling with the Dean is the Centre of the Universe theory (which honestly you’ve probably been hearing me mention no matter how long you’ve followed me because I’ve always kind of liked it, but recently [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) has been thinking some stuff through for me as well so there’ve been more posts about it here :P)

Quick catch up posts (which do not exhaustively go into this)

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/154685335618/mittensmorgul-more-from-the-918-chats-with>

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/151804512793/elizabethrobertajones-im-starting-to-come-to>

Anyway, this morning I saw this on my dash:

<http://cracked.tumblr.com/post/154690520170/wait-does-this-mean-were-all-supposed-to-have-no> 

which is a post (which is best to skip to the video on their site and watch it properly tbh) about how Homer Simpson is God… Which is interesting enough because I love this trope (my Dean is the Centre of the Universe tag seems to start with an anon discussion about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya which is this trope actually used knowingly that she literally IS God) but at one point one of the (admittedly kind of annoying) people in the discussion says that Homer is the centre of the universe. The example that I liked best was where it showed how the universe manipulates itself around him in his benefit, for example 2 separate montages of Marge thinking about leaving him, and seeing a dozen signs in the world around her guilt-tripping her not to, or examples of Homer getting “divine revelation” from uncannily timed TV messages (including one example where they knowingly make the joke that no one turned on the TV and after the message was delivered it turned itself back off too).

Actually when I was walking home this morning I was thinking as well about this (before I ever saw this video ~spooky music about it being dropped into my lap with uncanny timing~) because of Mittens and I discussing 5x22 and how that’s the most obvious example of the narrative bending around Dean’s will. I just watched 5x18 and of course he almost gives in but changes his mind… The overall message I get from season 5 is that Sam was “always” going to be possessed by Lucifer and he could avert what that meant literally from within but Destiny was always going to catch up with him at least on a technicality even if he always meant to fight from the moment he decided to say “Yes”. Meanwhile, Dean is given actual control of the narrative - though he’s told it’s inevitable in the same way Sam is, there also many moments when Dean is allowed to voice dissent with confidence, and unlike the repeated message throughout the season that Lucifer knows the exact date and time he’ll possess Sam, this starts in 5x03 while the plot of 5x01, the season opener, is about Dean finding out he’s supposed to be Michael’s vessel. I feel like the season is much more built around Dean’s resistance and eventual victory, while of course Sam is on a totally different story arc of penance, of which being possessed by Lucifer and averting the apocalypse is a key thing but not an act of resisting the narrative in the same way Dean (and by extension Cas who follows him on this arc from 4x22) gets to decide how the story goes. 

All this reminded me as well of this other amusing post, this time about Star Wars:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/153670549695/cracked-according-to-wookipedia-r2-d2s-line-of>

(Yeah, it’s Cracked again… I’m starting to feel like the fact I used to read this website almost daily several years ago might be more obvious than I thought in the way I react to media, even though I’ve been mostly clean except for selective picking of articles for years :P) 

This post argues that Star Wars is told from R2-D2′s perspective, and that all the narrative inconsistencies are a result of R2 as the narrator. It also picks up on the fact that R2 seems to be the focal point of the story, around which everything else turns, again a really compelling argument, as he has a sort of uncanny luck and ability to be in the middle of everything. 

It got me thinking about the way that Dean is used in the narrative; we all know the way it seems in season 1 Sam was set up to be the main character with his mytharc and all, and Dean just the sidekick to that… His role expands out of that massively to be the emotional heart of the show by telling the story emotionally through him (best example: the first 11 episodes of season 6, when Sam CAN’T contribute to the emotional telling of the story… But it’s an extreme example of the patterns the show works in). If you go right back to the early drafts of the show the whole ~surface Dean~ side of him was all the more obvious and his potential to be this character was much more limited. 

(For what it’s worth, I also seem to remember Bart was supposed to be the main character of the Simpsons before Homer’s popularity shifted the telling of the show to favour his emotional journey… the first couple of seasons feel much more about Bart… and obviously R2 is meant to be a cute robot sidekick from the surface level perspective until you get so many layers of over-watching the movies that you’re seeking out completely wild secondary perspectives to follow and hitting on a theory like that)

TBH also just musing on the position in the narrative, I have to be honest I’ve been harping on this for a day or so because I saw this post, which I should warn is hugely Dean-negative so obviously don’t click it if you don’t like reading unnecessarily wanky character hate:

<http://samwinchestermeta.tumblr.com/post/154691463592/supernatural-sam-and-dean-double-standards>

(you can tell it’s going to be good with a title like that :P)

Ignoring the massive amounts of wank because obviously I love Dean, I do find it interesting as a starting point to examine how the narrative treats Sam and Dean’s things differently. I don’t think it’s a double standard so much as the way their stories are told we’re always coming at them from completely different directions, and often that necessitates different reactions. Trying to take that post objectively (and mentally deleting all the bias that ignores huge chunks of story factors :P) you see a list of events where things happen to Sam for plot reasons, and when the same comes around for Dean, the events tend to be for/because of emotional reasons. For example:

> *Sam dies and is brought back to life in 2x22.  It is feared that he came back “wrong” and is possibly “evil.”  / Dean is resurrected in season 4 by Castiel; and it’s regarded as a miracle.  No one even wonders if Dean is actually Dean 

A whole plot was going to be made of this being wrong with Sam; that was a set up to the lost boy king Sam arc. The comments were supposedly foreshadowing that got lost, and became instead commentary on Sam’s character, which in season 3 was very damaged and ruthless (hi Mystery Spot Sam) but lurking under the surface. Ruby began her manipulation and Sam had been primed for it so by 3x16 he’s ready to work with her in desperation to save Dean. Even this different version of the story, Sam’s character development affects the plot (and leads into his season 4 descent arc and accidental freeing of Lucifer, again, everything Sam does directly affecting the plot) 

In contrast there was no reason to suspect Dean had been brought back wrong in season 4 (though Bobby did test Dean with everything to check he was still Dean in their first encounter of course because they DID wonder if Dean was actually Dean but they got it over and done with in one scene) because Sam and Bobby were really happy to believe angels had done it (the opening of 4x02) and though Dean was hiding stuff, it was not “direct” plot stuff. He had done something that affected the plot (broke the first seal) but this happens before the season, and his emotional arc is reacting to it. Sam is sympathetic to him when he finally breaks and tells Sam what happened, because it is in the past, the secret has no bearing on the plot going forwards, and Dean’s position here is that despite being broken, it’s a response, not behaviour leading towards something  _about_  to happen. 

Anyway, not really here to complain about that post, but mostly to muse on what it says about the way the narrative treats them, because wank or not, I think it’s interesting that it shows how clearly stuff happens to Sam, but stuff happens  _around_  or because of Dean, and the story leans towards Dean (not in a double standard way, but in the way that he is the emotional centre of it)… 

I guess the conclusion to this extremely scattered ramble is that considering all these characters and approaches to how they’re placed in the narratives of their respective stories, I see a lot of similarity in the way things are told around Dean to these other characters; including Haruhi, one who IS god, one who has god-like narrative control, and another who has a bizarre but compelling power over the narrative. Within the show, there’s a noticeable difference to the way Sam and Dean’s arcs are told to us (enough that people who stan one character over the other can get  _incredibly_  upset about what the differences seem to be implying).

And no I *still* don’t think I’ve managed to properly explain this theory in the way that makes the most sense to me and I’m like 100 posts in on trying :P 

* * *

Trying to figure out a link between these episodes, I realised that while they’re wildly different in many respects, they both contain elements of the Dean is the Centre of the Universe theory that have always amused me. I’ll try not to rely on other episodes too much but for the sake of not sounding like I’m dragging this all out of nowhere, “light” background reading includes:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/dean-is-the-centre-of-the-universe>   
<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/dean-n-death>   
<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/dean-vs-dogs>

Admittedly also the link between these episodes I’m starting with is going right back to the start because as usual Faith is the one of the roots of everything in this show for me. In this case, to argue the individual effort both Appointment in Samarra and Dog Dean Afternoon contribute to the wider picture of this theory, I would like to quickly point out the dog in Faith. 

Now, in that episode a reaper was under a malicious control, very much like Death is when we first meet him for real in 5x21; a spell binds them, and they want it to be broken. Dean has a part to play in the final confrontation which frees the reaper, seemingly mostly by being a distraction so that Sam can do the hard part. The dog helps Dean evade capture by the police, making the conclusion of the episode significantly easier for them. However since Dean knew Layla was going to be healed and felt he didn’t deserve his own healing since he discovered how it was done, I’ve always sort of thought he was walking to his death or wouldn’t have minded being traded for Layla - at least resetting the natural balance where it concerns him (this being a really important part of Dean’s story every time he encounters Tessa and of course adds a huge heaping of irony to how he chooses to contact her in 6x11). I have also always thought that Dean being sort of “outside” of his natural lifespan since 1x12 has been a very significant part in warping the natural order around him, and I feel he’s always been a sort of natural “ally” to reapers whatever protests he makes or ways he DOESN’T go along with them, as he consistently has a fascinating relationship with them (a dynamic which is still playing out with Billie, whether you see her as a successor to Tessa, Death or both as the key reaper/Death on the show).

Anyway for now it’s just interesting that there was a dog there in whatever tiny part it played, because of course 9x05′s real puzzler when it comes to the Grand Scheme of Things, is this:

> THE COLONEL  
> I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the real reason we were put here was to… [he barks] 

It may or may not have just been a joke to deliberately troll us where the writers had no answer… It certainly doesn’t play into the plot of season 9 in any way. But it’s left us with the lasting fact that canonically, dogs have a powerful role in the universe. Within the story they can be both omens or warnings, or frequently agents of death; hellhounds are one of the most fearsome enemies on the show, and are one side of the coin of Dean’s complicated relationship with dogs. In the wider picture, idly tracking Kuma’s appearances, I have noticed his appearances are something of an omen:

During the conversation that ominously foreshadows much of season 9′s plot including Dean’s death at the end in 9x02;

the episode before Dean kills Cain, with a MotW full of grim foreshadowing about that;

moments before Amara kidnaps Dean and shortly before Lucifer is released;

the episode before God returns;

the most recent sighting in an episode that warned of Lucifer’s plans and ended on a deeply ominous note about what he might do and what the consequences would be, followed immediately by an episode that slapped them in the face with the consequences.

I’ve also noticed that in 8x22 while Metatron is trying to talk Cas into doing “the angel trials” a dog barks angrily off-screen every time Metatron speaks, and I feel sure there were others, although perhaps I should leave that for people interested enough to really explore my Dean vs dogs tag for related rambling.

It’s enough circumstantial evidence that if we’re going off something as weird as “the real reason dogs were put here” I don’t think it’s completely out of line to assume the dogs have the same nose for the natural order as reapers do, and appear as warnings to try and safeguard it.

The dog imagery is also heavily attached to Dean, as an attack dog, but I want to argue that the core of both 6x11 and 9x05, despite altering Dean for a day into Death or a dog, is actually about Dean “Humanity” Winchester at his finest, and in this respect, as a guardian of humanity, or the token representative of our species who earns trust and power beyond the normal human scope, but is rewarded with knowledge. Death attempts to tip Dean off on the souls, which is beyond meddling for him. He is impressed with Dean’s response to the impossible challenge, that he KNEW Dean would fail. Death has a hands-off policy and theoretically no interest in whether everyone lives or dies at any particular time so long as he’s there to clean it all up. However, the sheer force of universe-altering strength from Dean to actually pull off averting the Apocalypse, which Death only let him do because it was a chance to free him from Lucifer’s spell, initially, leaves a lasting fondness. In 6x11 Death both lets Dean win AND gives him free advice about “the souls” which seems to be as much as he could tell him without obviously meddling. Similarly, despite knowing that Dean’s time as a dog was nearly over and that they were parting ways, the Colonel had no reason to tell Dean the secret of dogs but Dean had impressed him and earned his trust by freeing the dogs out of compassion and stepping up into a leadership role to them to defeat Chef Leo (who, after all, was a serious threat. Dean became a dog through a non-harmful magic, while Chef Leo was butchering animals to gain their powers). In both cases Dean is given a cryptic message and in both cases doesn’t follow through and either investigate the plan in season 6 thoroughly enough to discover how it all connects until Eve tells him (like Death in 5x21, she again waits for him to find her at an eating establishment, and then instead of killing them immediately, asks them for help - in this case to get Crowley to stop him killing her children). Meanwhile, Kuma drifts happily through several episodes which carry foreboding times ahead, and though I don’t expect Dean to spot him and go “Oh that’s the beautiful fluffy white dog we see sometimes!”, it is interesting that there are many moments in the following episodes where if a warning had been heeded, events would have played out differently - of all the examples, I think only 11x20 doesn’t have immediate awful effects as it’s building to a positive end of the season, and Kuma is merely heralding the complete upending of the natural order because of God’s impending return; 10x14, perhaps it’s more that Dean SHOULD have heeded the warning signs back in 9x11, and now he meets the consequence face on.

Anyway, I find it fascinating how these non-human characters come to respect and trust Dean through his choices and actions, and I think bringing his essential and un-bending humanity into the scenarios and approaching them in ways that those he has become like could not do themselves. Saving the dogs or respecting the natural order and killing the little girl, in both cases his non-human “mentor” is impressed with Dean’s actions and chooses to let him in to a higher level of awareness, a rare or downright unheard of privilege, to have a knowledge meant only for dogs, or for Death to become personally fond of you and invested in your personal journey. I see these as fascinating examples of the “pull” of Dean’s personality and examples of how his choices affect and change the world. On a wider scale this is how he effects change such as derailing the Original Story and stopping the apocalypse. The dog episode might be a jokey example, but it’s a very similar pattern to the way Dean became Death and though he was supposed to be the one learning a lesson, eventually Death, a supposedly neutral force of the universe that had just tried extremely hard to teach Dean HOW neutral this force was, bowed to his wishes.


	14. Okay But Has Cas Changed Dean And Sam In Turn?

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Cas changed a lot ever since he met Sam and Dean, but do you think some aspects of Sam and Dean changed specifically because they met Castiel?

* * *

Yes, a lot. :P 

*there, answered* *hits post*

 

This is probably the most complicated thing I’ve ever been asked, tbh, because I wanna answer it properly but you have to take into account a ginormous stretch of canon blighted by spotty character development when it comes to “change” while keeping in mind all the possible stuff about relationships and cause and effect >.> 

It’s much easier to just list the plot stuff that happens directly because of Cas so let’s go with that. :P

For Sam:

To start off with, season 4 Sam is a mess. Like, not many people can go through a personal crisis that literally starts the apocalypse. Since Cas is used to balance out Sam x Ruby in the narrative by giving Dean a foil while Sam’s unavailable, Sam’s relationship to Cas as an actual person is pretty shaky as they rarely interact and he mostly represents literally just angels and heaven to Sam. 

For example in 4x07 his faith takes a shake from meeting Cas  _and_  Uriel together being assholes on behalf of Heaven. Uriel browbeats Sam some more at the end of the episode on the same theme while Dean n Cas are having their nice park bench chat, and as far as 4x16 where Sam has a go at Cas for letting Dean get hurt so badly, at the end of the episode, I think he’s still seeing Cas as a person… well, not so much as a person but as an angel… who should have not fucked up like that because he’s supposed to be infallible if angels are all that great. 

And of course especially from the flashback episodes, and Sam’s season-long mission to kill Lilith loosely phrased as revenge for Dean’s death (despite Dean being fine now whenever he says it :P) the whole issue that Sam couldn’t bring Dean back and Cas did it “for” him plays into Sam’s insecurities - I wouldn’t say Sam being jealous of Cas for doing that DIRECTLY fuels anything, but it’s Sam’s descent arc season and at the very least it has to make him feel worse and powerless (and season 4 is a LOT about power and wanting to feel strong to Sam) so it’s a contributing factor to his all round disaster zone season… 

I don’t think Cas seriously DIRECTLY affects and changes Sam over season 5 very much, especially as they both don’t work together a great deal AND work more with both old allies - more Bobby than ever before, working with Ellen and Jo and Rufus and implied off-screen missions we never even see but sound like they could take up a whole half a season on their own, and towards the end of the season also with weird allies like Crowley, that make Cas seem quite normal and part of the team but I feel like it’s a bigger picture thing as Sam doesn’t have quite the same personal investment, so again Cas is mostly just contributing to a greater sense of working with others and relying on a wider network outside of JUST Sam n Dean. I think the only direct hit Sam takes from Cas is 5x16, as a witness to Cas returning the amulet and Dean throwing it away - 5x17 again Sam expresses shaken faith… so again that personal arc is affected by Cas but is as much about God as anything

Season 6 & 7 though, Sam’s entire story up to 7x17 is directly affected by Cas’s actions, and so all his development over those seasons can track back to Cas, whether we’re referring to old traumas that start there (e.g. the way he sometimes still checked for if things were real or not on instinct way after having Hallucifer gone) or just his good positive growth as a character as he comes out the challenges stronger in many ways… Cas eventually manages to put him all back together as good as he’ll ever be, freeing Sam from the physical effects of the mytharc that haunted him since he was 6 months old, and so anything Sam has done to move on from that - e.g. whatever your opinion on it, his life he attempted to make with Amelia being the first thing he could truly choose to do afterwards - can be traced back to Cas’s actions.

Season 8 though goes back to that jealousy that Sam could feel for Cas (this is a judgement-free paragraph talking about how it was presented), and 8x08 paints it as a friendly and good-natured rival brothers thing as if Cas has already slotted into their family and just needs a reminder Sam still rides shotgun… By the end of the season though Sam cites his insecurity about Dean not trusting him as Dean trusting “another angel, another vampire” (to paraphrase) and Cas has to come under that heading as, at that point, what other angels has Dean truly trusted in a way that threatens Sam? (… I mean I ALSO see it as Gadreel foreshadowing since with hindsight aaargghh?? but that’s neither here nor there for this :P) and this insecurity about Dean’s faith in him directly leads to Sam pushing through with the trials to the point of near-death. A lot of this arc is delivered through the Benny plotline when it comes to DIRECTLY making Sam jealous, but the amped up season 8 Destiel arc clearly must unsettle him to lead to the outburst and tbh makes me not really accept any shipper!Sam headcanons from before mid/late season 9 just because he was so threatened by Cas as a RIVAL if we use the Benny plotline to explain it, with the intensity of a kid who just became a middle child and sees the parent’s attention getting divided. (again… judgement free, it’s MEANT to be a dark time for them)

Anyway after a point, say, 9x11 and that hug, Cas becomes more on the path to spending honest to god time with Sam and giving him someone outside of Dean who’s a constant in their lives and a friend, basically the same thing Dean gets in buckets with the Destiel stuff, handed over to Sam as reassurance that Cas will be there for him too. I think that change is often shown in a very larval form or shown that it’s going to happen but isn’t quite there yet such as 10x01 Cas “should” have been there to help Sam but he’s sick and they fell out over Osric maiming Sam, and despite being in phone contact, Sam’s seriously pretty wonky and with Cas practically exiled for most of season 10 until it’s Bad Decisions Round Who’s Even Still Counting, towards the end of the season where Sam calls on Cas to help him, he isn’t given many chances to offer that support to either of them (I think being there for Sam at the end of 10x14 is very important). And, like, 11x23 finishes with the same set up as 9x23/10x01 on Cas and Sam’s side… Cas tries to offer support and is banished and without him there, Sam acts erratically and recklessly in his grief and gets shot. 

I like this gifset:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147168588211/ahoyspn-sam-telling-dean-that-he-had-no-one>

just suggesting what Cas COULD represent to Sam if only the world gave them a break, and I think somewhere along the way in season 9 Sam starts to rely on Cas more. He’s SUPPOSED, to go back to that scene in 8x08 that ended with Sam shoving Cas to get to the passenger side door of the Impala before him, to be their “better grip, extra stability” or however he described the benefits of the third wheel, and for Sam it was made in a huge production about his willingness and readiness to have such a thing although obviously Cas has been acting that way towards him basically since season 5 (I think he was the first person to okay Sam’s Swan Song plan by seriously listening and being honest about his belief in Sam?)… I think he’s accepted his third wheel at least since mid season 9, but obviously there’s a lot of growth still on that subject, but at least when it comes to TFW dynamics, the Sam - Cas relationship is the one that changes it from 3 guys awkwardly hanging out with a friend of a friend dynamic in the middle, and an actual team as obviously Sam and Dean are a unit, and Dean n Cas have their whole… thing…

Thinking of that: what has Cas ever done for Dean?

Well, pulled him out of Hell for one.

Before that, though, I always think a really thorough Destiel rewatch should start with Faith and Houses of the Holy, because Cas directly shakes up some of the core Dean characterisation just by existing:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/146740983510/katteens-213-parallels>

4x02 Dean struggles hard to reconcile that it was even an angel, and Cas wondering that Dean didn’t think he deserved to be saved basically set Dean up to be completely thrown out of a comfort zone he didn’t even know  _was_  a comfort zone when you consider it contained his sceptical lack of faith and his entire journey with self-worth up to that point. Hell fucks Dean up completely, but Cas seems to show up offering an equal amount of un-fucking if Dean would accept it.

Like with Sam, Cas starts off also representing a question of faith for Dean - he has his own struggle with it but he hesitantly and reluctantly picks some up from Cas - 5x16 breaks him too, and he abandons the amulet, only for when it comes back for him to immediately within minutes of screen time watching the episodes consecutively lay into God for all his abandonment and shitty parenting to the universe and humanity. The weird little bubble of Dean’s faith or at least vague, desperate hope, lasts from around early/mid season 4 to 5x16 and clearly switches to hoping Cas has a point about God after 5x02 when he surrenders the amulet to Cas. And it’s seeing Cas broken by 5x16 that I think really drives home how much of a defeat they just took. Like, even in 11x03 Cas n Dean are equally bitter and sceptical of God’s intervention to Sam’s latest bubble of optimism, so they match on this, as with many things.

And that’s the other thing about early seasons Cas that changes Dean: we get to see him make a true friend who he strongly relates to and understands him on a soul-staringly deep level, which can be as good as often as he finds it uncomfortable. There’s loads of little examples but I like 5x17 where they have the deadbeat dad conversation just because it flips around the big God quest and takes Cas to Dean’s level of seeing it as a kind of human relationship that Dean can empathise with. There’s so much in their early interactions in season 4 & 5 where they just  _understand_  each other, and considering Sam and Dean are played as direct opposites to each other, and it’s starkest in the earlier seasons, Dean having someone he inherently clicks with is a complete shift in the sorts of dynamics we’re used to. 

I think he and Bobby have a similar relationship made on a mutual understanding of each other, but I feel like such a mom to say this, it’s nice for Dean to get out of the house and make new friends, you know? :P Cas offers a really important theme for Dean of learning to trust…  Season 6 & 7 he seemed to lose that easy friendship right from the start, and by the end experiences shattering betrayal and heartbreak in a way I don’t think he ever really had to experience before. That betrayal weighs on him more bitterly than anything that happens with Sam, even if he holds long grudges with those (e.g. still bringing up Ruby in 8x23) while he forgave Cas by the end of season 7. And I don’t think he experienced loss like it before either. Or LOVE like it. He’s a mess of emotions around Cas at the end of season 7, but Purgatory wipes the slate clean. 

He gets to believe for a while that he’s bringing Cas home. I think that all changes Dean’s convictions and in a weird way considering how he gets back from Purgatory, softens him. We’re shown he trusts Benny in part because he saved Cas’s life (again, trust and exercising it because of Cas), and in the world of Dean Winchester season 8 is full of internal political upheaval, softening and trying new things and losing some of the black and white view that had ruled him for a long time. By the end of the season he’s backtracked on a lot of it, killing Benny for Sam, for example, but he can’t argue down the importance of Cas in 8x23, and won’t justify it to Sam (although 9x03 finally tests that and forces him to put Sam over Cas) - there’s an absence in what he recants for Sam’s sake, in that moment, based on what Sam says to him before. 

I think it all, on the TFW side of things, tries to show him he can have both, as he’s the one stuck between the two sides vying for his attention. But I think more than that it’s recognising that Cas is truly “always there” as he finally voices out loud in 11x23… I think to rewind, we go back to 6x20 where he says Cas has always fought for them before and basing his trust on that… So I think as well as learning forgiveness he learns to rebuild broken trust, which for Dean is a HUGE thing as he struggles with falling into very absolute, black and white ways of dealing with things. In 8x22 he refuses to trust Cas, while he’s hurt and confused still from the crypt scene, but from then on there’s a process of Cas rebuilding the trust, and a season later in 9x22, Dean is shown offering huge trust in Cas on sketchy grounds (WE know Cas wasn’t doing anything underhand, but Dean has relatively little ground to believe him except for judging Cas’s actions for himself and maybe assuming Metatron is a dick and probably lying and trying to make Cas look bad. 10x22, Cas says he’ll be there for Dean literally never mind the whole “murdering the world” thing, and finally in 11x23 Dean acknowledges that Cas is a trustworthy, reliable and steady presence in their lives… To go back to 6x20, that trust that was broken was forged in battle over the first couple of seasons with Cas, but not particularly put to the test as the MAIN subject… Carver era intentionally makes Dean’s ability to learn to trust Cas part of the main subplot between them and builds it back up again in a way I think has much stronger foundations now as it was built specifically over questions of trust and reliability. I think giving Dean someone who challenges him and then earns this level of absolute trust is immense character development on Dean’s behalf

As well as that, in 11x23 Dean has the presence of mind to apologise for the way they’d treated Cas, and to listen and acknowledge him in the conversation. Dean wants to make that effort to be a good friend to him, and I think that conversation shows a lot of growth and maturity in the way he handles such things, if nothing else born from all that worry about Cas over the preceding dozen episodes and wanting to make right things that must have haunted him about Cas as he had an itemised list and the need to force some alone time to discuss it with him. The show often has portrayed Dean as a pretty bad friend, self-absorbed in the drama of the moment, so I like to think that Cas is giving him the chance to learn to be more than that, and to try to grow and change. His consuming worry about Sam is the part of the codpendency highlighted in Carver era, and demonstrated harshly with 9x03 and Dean sending Cas away, and through their interactions from 9x06-9x10 I think he’s forced into at least some self-reflection on this, although with the plot getting drawn out and out I think this is one of the worse-handled things between them as Cas has to keep being sent away and it’s hard to find a coherent narrative about it when he’s randomly riverboat gambling or gone to Gaza without much comment between episodes :P I think we just have to take the “Dean stresses about Casifer” stretch of episodes as him generally feeling bad all round for Cas-related stuff.

Anyway I guess to sum up for Dean… I think it comes back to faith in the end as well but faith in CAS, and I think Cas profoundly changes him by being someone with no obligation to stick around so to speak (as Dean might see it), but by caring so much and doing so openly, Dean sees someone who genuinely has faith in him (even if he struggles to understand why at times) but also he grows to have faith that Cas WILL be there for them. And a great deal of Dean’s issues especially to pick on that end of season 8 argument I was talking about, are about abandonment, and Dean’s issues with it are HUGE. I think he can and does lash out to drive people away when he doesn’t feel worth it or to get the abandonment over and done with on his terms… 9x03 was such a horrible moment because it was right after the resolution to this argument about abandonment and then Dean is forced to push Cas away but for once he has no control over it, and was hoping Cas could stay and seeing a scenario where he might actually have to… 

Anyway, Dean learning to have faith in Cas as a friend is way more huge and important than Dean having faith in angels or God or whatever it started out as. That bit in 4x18 where he prays seemingly to God and Cas shows up to answer always stands out to me as one of the core moments that defines them.


	15. The Handprint Thing

[i think the tension has forced a shoulder fetish to form between these two](http://consulting-cannibal.tumblr.com/tagged/i-think-the-tension-has-forced-a-shoulder-fetish-to-form-between-these-two) [give anyone enough years something weird is bound to happen](http://consulting-cannibal.tumblr.com/tagged/give-anyone-enough-years-something-weird-is-bound-to-happen) [do u think dean looks up shoulder fics](http://consulting-cannibal.tumblr.com/tagged/do-u-think-dean-looks-up-shoulder-fics) [I’VE READ SOME](http://consulting-cannibal.tumblr.com/tagged/I%27VE-READ-SOME) (via consulting-cannibal)

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/126904620188/venusdebotticelli-dean-and-cas-in-season-10)

ACTUALLY NO, you know what I am still stuck on this, thanks to their award. (She says, having made up her mind to reblog this once already in the last hour without commentary before I ever saw [venusdebotticelli](http://tmblr.co/mzRb-zBiW9PdcRN5OsOI0Kw) cough into her sleeve to allude to the fact that “[some people](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Dean%27s-elbow-fetish-for-ts)” have dozens of joking posts and actual fan fiction they’ve written about Dean’s elbow fetish on their blog)

Because you know what, shoulder touching is the literal foundation of their whole friggin’ relationship. It’s not just something at random: it’s how Destiel is conveyed to us through physical touch. All through the years. Sorry if I go on about these points but since I’ve just finished watching it, I’m really hung up on season 4, which is a wild ride of shoulder touches, and it’s a [fucking erotic arc](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/126580619848/holy-trinity-ehem-i-mean-wow-interestingly) and it’s used to establish the importance of all those shoulder touches to us. Before Dean n Cas ever even meet there’s jokes about the way Cas touched him based on the fact Dean came back, well, touched. And Dean was making defensive jokes about the chemistry he’d clearly had with whatever yanked him out of Hell - before he and this mysterious rescuer even met Pamela turned it kinky. And then there’s the whole Anna and the handprint thing halfway through the season where she puts her hand over it right in the middle of sex, and again it’s using that touch permanently branded into Dean’s skin from Cas in an erotic way and… yeah, it’s somehow turning Dean’s shoulder into a point worth at least some attention during sex -  _because_  of Cas’s touch there. And then at the end of the season, in their fight, Dean [pays back the favour](http://cgstiel.tumblr.com/post/115842742352/destiel-week-day-3-relationship-development):

And then aaaall through the rest of the show almost all their touches are shoulder touches. And maybe it’s the “safe” place for them to touch for the most part except a few very sparse face touches or the odd lingering touch that runs right down the arm from shoulder to elbow, but to many of those touches, especially when the other is hurt or they’re fighting, are really significant, emotionally charged touches. It’s ALWAYS important when Dean n Cas touch each other’s shoulders, and that foundation is WHY. Because it’s not just a place to touch - it was always THE place to touch, and it means more to them. 

And then season 10, which this chemistry award they’ve just won is sort of about, had so FEW moments of contact between them ([this gifset ](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/118004656864/fuckitykidneys-10x14-10x18-10x20)has the ONE other missing shoulder touch, pre-dating 10x22) and yet all the moments that weren’t that restraint in 10x03 were shoulder touches. Weird, not looking each other in the eye, backs turned, face averted shoulder pats, but it was still how they touched each other. Like their whole relationship was drifting in that awful-for-Destiel isolated season… And so their shoulder touches became this strange corrupted version of how they had once touched and had it mean SO MUCH to them.

And then 10x22, after all this bubbled over, and finally Cas made that appeal to Dean, when he was already too far gone but Cas had to try.

([x](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/118945272998/every-time-theyve-touched-this-season-the-contact)) and [the parallel wasn’t lost on people](http://glassclosetcastiel.tumblr.com/post/118952998779/please-just-fcking-kill-me-with-the-left) either.

And that was such a raw, awful scene, meant to show how everything was absolutely terrible forever, and Dean was completely gone, and how this touch now meant nothing to him? He rips Cas’s hand off his shoulder to start the fight, and Cas just grabs and grabs at it before the fight, walks around Dean in a circle, and like in the gifset up at the top of this incoherent breakdown, tries to stop Dean leaving with the SAME touch in the same place… 

It’s tragic, it’s terrible, and they absolutely fucking deserved a chemistry award for a season where they didn’t touch or look each other in the eye after like episode 9 or something, because my god was their story in season 10 one of touch nonetheless. Because it was genuinely UPSETTING to see them touch like this. I had my hands over my face just from the shoulder grab before it ever turned into the fight, because it was that rejection that hurt most before it ever turned into Dean hitting Cas.

( ~~And we’ve seen how much Jensen and Misha like touching each other so the fact they managed to sell this gives them a fair few points as well. :P~~ )

Basically this entire break down was to say, yes, Dean n Cas definitely have a weird thing about shoulders and if they got together there’s like a 90% chance that would turn into a fetish because of how often their need to touch is channeled through these shoulder touches and it’s how they understand their physical relationship with each other. :P

 

* * *

 


	16. How do subtext?

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Hello! Sorry for this stupid question, but here it is... how do you notice subtext?? Like, is it something that is obvious to you or do you know what/where to look for?? Am I dumb for not seeing it by myself, or is it actually okay and you need a skill for it, that's what I would like to know... *sigh*.. but also it's not like I'll accept any explanation that someone gives, I'll take it only if I find it reasonable, but lmao do I even have a right when I can't come up with anything by myself??

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Oh gosh, that’s not an easy answer… Good thing I just had a coffee and my brain is nearly back online!

Essentially, it’s just about awareness and willingness to engage with the text on the level of being aware that it’s a text, rather than losing yourself to it. In a very good movie you forget where you are and you’re 100% in there and your thoughts are just absorbing what is in front of you. In a bad movie you’re gossiping and joking about the characters, even in your mind if you are polite in the cinema, and identifying shit like “oh wow what a surprise his sketchy brother is betraying him” or whatever. Aka you are viewing it as a bad movie rather than disappearing into the good one. 

And at that point you are an objective level removed, and your awareness of tropes and storytelling and general themes of the genre means you’re now engaging with the story and its subtext on a higher level than pure indulgent viewership. (Which is a blessed state and extremely important for creators to cause that to happen in us, but if we want to be critical of a text we then need to lovingly make this step back to critique and explore and analyse and understand WHY we liked the thing we liked. Or, of course, hated the thing we hated.)

This is the answer the internet gives on What Are Subtext?

The important thing is that the subtext is an actual, solid, understandable part of the story, but it’s not one that the text will actually announce with words… Unless it’s being extremely post-modern.

  


(You should watch Jane the Virgin, it’s amazing)

In that example, it’s extremely obvious in context that the situation sucks, and our narrator is telling us, as a voice outside the scene, how it feels for the characters even though it’s blatant on screen, it’s humorous for us to be told this as part of the overall conceit of the show, which is extremely postmodern and constantly types out the details of the story and how the characters feel, things they don’t know, etc, on screen for us to make sure we’re all on board and understand what’s going on. Using the narration like this is making what is subtext in the acted scenes, for example jealous eyebrows and the sort of other micro-expressions we over-analyse, into stated fact about the feelings. The serious nuance comes in other, much more intelligent ways in the story.

Another direct and frequent way we interact with subtext aside from it being just literally anything happening on screen that is not directly commented on but may be evident from the work of acting, camera, and setting-related design and other choices, is dramatic irony, which is a very good use of subtext which draws us in and makes us extremely aware of what we know that the other characters don’t, and plays on that for our attention and investment in the story, but of course MUST go unstated at least to some characters, meaning that any engagement we have with the conceit around said character(s) means we’re seeing the subtext they miss. Growing up reading Lemony Snicket was a masterclass in storytelling and general life so I’ll let him explain:

> “Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, “I can’t wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered,” and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.” 

When we’re reading a text to identify subtext, we need to have awareness of some pretty basic foundations, such as the major story tropes and styles, and character and setting and a lot of other things… Fortunately as long as you read books, watch films and TV series and otherwise consume tons of media, you will have at least unconsciously absorbed a LOT of the toolbox needed for this. You just need to know enough to know how to expect what happens next, OR to know when a story has done something radical which is NOT what you would have expected, and breaks a mould you thought it was set in.

For example, the cold open of 2x03 features a vampire, a panicked, conventionally attractive woman in a white top running through woods, being hunted by Gordon, with the vampire as the typical tropey victim, and Gordon facelessly featured as a seeming hook-handed killer. It LOOKS like it’s going to play into an extremely typical slasher story, but once Sam and Dean realise the victim was a vampire, it turns the entire set up on its head and is immensely unsettling to the foundation of the show (which is how Dean handles the episode). I use that example a lot but it’s one of the most blatantly tropey cold opens on the show which gives away nothing to suggest it will be subverted, because it’s so early in the show their mould is extremely simple, and you could almost not trust that they wouldn’t do another extremely on the nose urban legend, before they have really established themselves beyond the season 1 style.

That whole set up relies on giving us invisible cues we read which are the subtext of the scene, and then using the fact that this set up plays us really hard to believe one thing and the other, in order to make it so complex and confusing and uncertain even for us, as we relied on the cold open to tell us what was what and who was good and who was bad, which if we followed one emotional POV of the episode, could last as long as Dean’s uncertainty that the vampires weren’t bad.

Storytelling is built enormously on this foundation of subtext and stuff, and one of the things that you can tell is bad about Buckleming episodes is that they really don’t put in much subtext: things are fairly straightforward, subterfuge is broadcast, and there’s rarely deeper meanings or connections between events in their stories. It comes across shallow and weird, especially with side characters with bizarre and unexplored motivations, or surface level motivations which are not explored and we can only take it on face value what they actually care about. One of the most hilarious Buckleming scenes to me is the one where Crowley “forces” Lucifer to tell the court of demons that Crowley is the best and he is in charge, while with his back turned to Crowley, Lucifer winks and implies with his tone of voice that he is/will be in charge and is the real king they should be bowing to. This is their idea of dramatic irony, subtlety and subtext in character interactions and it is utterly, truly dreadful to behold, in the sort of way I want to put it in a museum as an example to future children to learn what not to do. You can press a button and Lucifer’s eyes light up in the exhibit!

In any case you’re probably really mostly asking about Destiel and bi Dean subtext etc, because this is what majorly concerns the meta-interested peeps. But to me it is really really essential to know and care about the entire house of cards. Billie’s words about the structure and function and behaviour of the universe in 13x05 are a wonderful description of how writing works, and as a bonus she doesn’t say “this is a writing metaphor” and wink directly into the camera, as Buckleming would have written it, but Yockey leaves this idea in the writing itself for us to interpret and understand. There’s a LOT of commentary in this show about writing but this one in particular really resonates with me when it comes to talking about interpretation, because we really have to understand and handle the entire story in order to really line up any of the pieces in a way that makes sense.

Right now I have that [lil lesson in visual subtext floating around, about Ketch and Dean in 13x18 and Dean n Cas in 13x19](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/173293008228/elizabethrobertajones-tired-meta-innuendo). I think it’s a great example because Ketch and Dean have a real history, and that’s super important to remember when on the surface it looks like just a joke. [The history goes back as far as 2x03, when I’ve written before about seduction and the trap Dean falls into with men filling a space in his life.](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/159468635883/elizabethrobertajones-elizabethrobertajones) The tl;dr of this linked meta is that Gordon, the Siren and then Crowley as a main arc over season 9-10 seduced Dean in a very similar pattern. 9x11 is the best example of a Dean seduction episode, but through season 10, Crowley is so successful that he has the dubious honour of having actually managed to bed Dean in the process, while the others failed, though the Siren at least got a proxy-kiss.

Ketch comes on to Dean in 12x14 and there was even a shot or promo image ([I can’t remember which this is now](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/157732669444/that-bottle-on-the-table-between-dean-and-ketch)) where they had this bottle in the middle of the table between them.

Bottles are suggestive imagery in any case, and we have Cas flirting outrageously (for Cas) with Dean in 9x09 including this action of stroking his bottle in front of Dean:

Ketch’s approach with Dean was a lot like Crowley’s, emphasising their similiarity and trying to get his little adventure with Dean to tap into all the dark parts Dean denies. In the end Ketch went overboard beating up the vampire girl, Dean went into protective mode, and didn’t unleash an inner killer, like Gordon and Crowley in particular had wanted him to, and so this Manly Bonding Over Violence failed to occur, they went their separate ways, and Ketch shacked up with Mary instead because this is a fucked up story :D

Once this incestuous connection to Ketch occurred, he for once is off-limits to Dean now, so he’s having this oddly romantic bonding episode with Dean in a sense - the kind that without this context would be huge alarm bells because it combines the ridiculous homoeroticism of Dean x Cole (thank the fucking lord that stopped short) and the plausible good chemistry of Dean x Crowley in the sense of Jensen and DHJ being a fucking delight when they’re together. This would be EXTREEEEEEEEMELY shippable in other circumstances, but instead Dean knows Ketch slept with Mary, they mother and son killed him and destroyed that gross connection, and then he floated back up like a turd, and so they mostly just talk about when and how they get to kill him again, and not in the “this is a blatant flirtation” way Crowley pointed out it was basically a come on from Dean to threaten to kill him in the closing lines of 9x10 and the opening lines of 9x11 featured Dean threatening to kill Crowley.

So Dean chilling 5ft away from Ketch  ~~in a hot tub because he’s not gay~~  in the woods, and telling him flat out he’s not his type, is legit and not connected to subtext telling us that Dean isn’t bi, it’s that Dean in a zillion years is not going to sleep with Ketch, that if he was younger and dumber he would have, but he knows what’s up and now Ketch slept with Mary, this is fucked up in a way that we’re now verging into bizarre John subtext instead. The phallic symbol of a gun - used a lot by Dean from between his legs in humourous or not so humorous scenes and teased as penis subtext a lot ([especially in #THINMAN with the “say hello to my little pistola” moment where Dean directly compares dick and gun in coded talk while having it out with Harry](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/150042421548/awed-frog-elizabethrobertajones-dean-vs)) - is therefore presented as Dean with it loose and not pointed at Ketch. Surface level, he’s not gonna shoot Ketch right now. Subtext… He’s… not gonna… shoot……. ketch right now…

And then you go to the kitchen scene with Dean n Cas, the subtext of beer as dicks is also deeply established as well as alcohol as sexual bonding between men, right back to Gordon and the Siren and Crowley, in a bad way, but also positive; Dean bonds with people who share a drink with him and his primary way of picking up women is in bars. In the open of 1x19 he and Sam have full beers on their table, and Dean goes over and buys more beers to talk to the women he wants to pick up, then goes to Sam and puts those beers down - in the end Sam has 4 full, untouched beers on the table in front of him when Dean runs off to go seal the deal at the end of the scene. I find that so utterly hilarious.

But yeah. Between Dean n Cas it has a much deeper level of symbolism about their connection, and the major moments are pretty numerous, but I love in 10x18 at the Last Supper, the Kingdom Beer bottle superimposed over the whole of Cas for a moment in the fade between scenes, before Dean picks it up and drinks from it. There’s also moments like 6x03 when Dean is praying to Cas where he’s holding a bottle directly between his legs, as Cas arrives in the room. Details like this always make me laugh. You need a dirty mind for this sort of subtext :P The show itself has a dirty mind… Season 7 is full of Dick jokes, but they’re only the most overt that the show makes. 9x17 is RIDICULOUS because Misha has the foulest mind and spent roughly 50% of the time he was directing doing close ups of Dean’s face as he drinks seductively from a bottle, or with him standing with a pool cue between his legs, running his hand up and down it. I… Am not going to comment further. It was, however, the episode where Crowley thought he had sealed the deal with Dean.

In any case the subtext of the beer in 13x19 is more likely to link directly to 12x10 and “this will do nothing for me but I appreciate the gesture” and the more wholesome theme of Dean trying to be nurturing and inviting Cas into the home and family - 12x10 was basically addressing and fixing an enormous problem of miscommunication about this. In the end despite the gesture - of both not killing Cas just to spite Ishim, or giving Cas a beer when it won’t make him drunk, Cas ended up still leaving on the mission that ended up with him stealing the Colt and then going off with Jack and Kelly. And this season the theme remains of miscommuncation, this time with so much dramatic irony that WE know that the characters don’t that their cross purposes can be seen from space… Hopefully for the sake of addressing it.

But I have a dirty mind and this is an established part of Destiel subtext from other scenes where the beer was more directly in focus, such as 9x09, meaning no harm in highlighting the upwards pointing phallic symbols in the room and grabbing an awkward shot of Dean holding the beer pointed Caswards from his lower torso… :P

I think in the end spotting innuendo is important to know when it is and isn’t intended by signifiers in the story and characters that it is just random. There’s almost certainly accidental moments where characters with no chemistry or emotional subplot have done things which might look suggestive but it’s up to us to use logic and reason to guess they’re not really telling us they have a boner for each other. Since Dean n Cas have romantic subtext and a strong history of innuendo and sexual subtext as well, it’s fair game to at least laugh about unfortunate implications, wonder about the Big O Slush Machine that Cas spilled over the phone to Dean in 9x06, or look stonefaced into the camera and say “that’s a dick.”


	17. Destiel distinctions between Sam n Dean from Cas

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Hello u, i was wondering about s/t destiel meta there is a lot of significance placed on the show making distinctions between sam and dean reacting to Cas like very obvious this season, but this doesnt happen vice versa does it? As in Cas usually isnt shown to react differently to Sam and Dean if something happens to both of then like when they were taken in s12 or when he was in the empty "dam and dean need me". Why do they show dean worry more about Cas than Sam but Cas doesnt about samndeN

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Hi!

It’s definitely not about making a statement that Cas doesn’t love Dean any more than he loves Sam. 

I think there’s very different standards that apply. Basically that there’s ALWAYS inescapably the entire substance of these two relationships which always apply and very often are called out by the narrative in these moments anyway. That their relationships are incomparable even when they’re compared and lumped together. That Cas and Dean forged their relationship through actions which are wholly different from how he forged his friendship with Sam. We saw him barely interact with Sam for the *longest* time. 

I honestly can’t recall him getting alone time with Sam between Sam laying into him in 4x16 and Cas being drunk and surly at Sam in 5x17 (though, tbh, I consider that an excellent forward momentum episode for both Cas and Dean AND Cas and Sam’s relationships that we got basically nothing of that quality for for miles around). Between 5x17 and 5x18 Cas and Sam work together to find Dean, but it’s off-screen, however it IS the first and for a long time only time they seriously work together, alone on sometime. 

Through season 5 it’s implied Cas is working with them both off-screen with no specifics given but enough that his loyalties are obvious and he calls Sam a friend in 5x13, not to his face. He continues to majority interact with Dean only or Sam n Dean, and I think 5x21 is his only mission on screen without Dean but with Sam and Bobby, until much much later (I mean, am I wrong or is 10x17 the only other episode with this specific dynamic right down to Dean hanging with Crowley on the other side of the story?). 

9x11 is the first time Cas and Sam SERIOUSLY hang out and discuss their relationship and work out where they stand on everything, emotionally bond over their connected story arcs they’ve been running alongside each other the whole time since season 6, and finally get in the bonding time and hug we deserve. I’m pretty sure it’s the only time they’re seriously alone since season 5… With a passing moment in 8x10, perhaps, and their conversation in 7x21 which seemed important to me but the camera chooses to focus on Meg sneaking out and the sound fades out so you have to strain to catch some of their words - the fact they talk is literally a background detail. 

I remember 9x22 airing and being in fandom at last, and how much of a DELIGHT we all took it that Cas and Sam worked together, and in season 10, building on that, it was the first season they routinely had scenes together without Dean, and their own subplot based on actual interaction, and multiple episodes they were alone in a situation together. TFW having all branches connected back to each other for regular interaction and well-established non-fraught and genuinely connected relationships, literally dates to the Mark of Cain, and honestly *since* it, Cas has gone back pretty much to a default Dean-connected character, though his relationship with Sam is clearly better and more routinely shown to exist beyond the fact they keep fighting side by side. 

(And honestly I got some flak for saying once a long time ago during season 10 that Cas and Sam weren’t properly shown to be friends until 9x11 but fuck it, we’ve had seasons of them actually seeming to be friends with their own proper connections since and it’s nothing like it was before 9x11 and now I have all of seasons 9-13 to compare to what came before I’m doubling down on that hard, and insisting that Cas saying Sam was his friend in 5x13 was a very symbolic but not particularly real gesture. Like, you’d die for him but do you even know his middle name? Carver era established Sam and Cas as real friends, not just guys who occasionally fight alongside each other and care about Dean a lot as their ONE common purpose aside from saving the world from whatever, and given the wealth of better interaction between them and how different it feels, I’m sticking by that. They NEEDED an arc that shoved them together to work on things WITHOUT Dean to build up any REALISTIC sense they were friends and give us the actual meat of a relationship to base a dynamic on.)

Edlund points out the difference between Dean n Cas and Sam and Cas a couple of times in season 6 in very bad lines which feel horrible but tell a truth nonetheless, and one that persists in better times - the “more profound bond” line and the awful awful use of “raised you from perdition” on Sam. One directly tells us that Cas considers that he and Dean have spent more quality time and have more in common, and the other is deliberately taking a MEANINGFUL and high intensity line between Dean and Cas, and applying it to Sam and Cas in a way that could ONLY fall flat and suggest more horror and awfulness than good, and lacked all of the interpersonal importance that Dean took from meeting Cas. 

In season 7 when Cas saves Sam it’s easy to connect to Cas’s pleas to Dean in 6x20, 6x21 and 6x22 that it’s ABOUT Dean and finally 7x01 where he promises DEAN personally that he will redeem himself to him, followed by choosing to save Sam in 7x17 with a strong thematic implication that he’s doing it for Dean and Sam’s just the object of doing it, and only in 7x21 (muffled and unimportant) and 9x11 does Cas actually relate his experiences TO Sam and begin to feel direct empathy to him and relate to him. 

You know, meanwhile *gestures back at 4x01 and then fast forwards through all the DeanCas stuff that happens in between there and now* More profound bond blah blah blah.

I mean at no point do I doubt that Cas doesn’t CARE for Sam, even in a very abstract way to begin with. But it’s an uneven playing field even if by the second half of season 9 I think they’re comfortably friends and consider each other family in a very meaningful way beyond the kind of brother-in-law family obligation they had via Dean. It’s just still a Thing that Cas and Dean are different in a fundamentally powerful way that Cas can’t compare to for Sam, and when it WAS compared in the “raised you from perdition” line, it’s in a way that deliberately feels AWFUL in context. Especially as saving Sam *meaningfully* was engineered by Dean and done by Death in 6x11, which Cas played no part in whatsoever and actively argued against doing, out of concern for Sam, but by 6x20 with Sam at least upright and restored for the time being, certainly looks even worse on paper, BEFORE we get to Sam’s fear that Cas brought him back soulless on purpose.

Meanwhile, Cas has always reacted to protect Sam and Dean equally when the two of them are in trouble, whether it’s for Dean’s sake or for both their sakes, things tend to happen to them *together* and so it would be pretty horrible to show Cas not caring about Sam when both he and Dean need saving. In some ways this is avoided by the story by just always setting Cas up in a way where it’s either an easy “SamnDean” statement, or having him *with* Dean in Purgatory. When something horrible happens to Sam, in 9x01 Cas is separated and unable to help; 9x09 has Cas realise something is terrible wrong with Sam beyond what Dean knows, and react by stealing grace and it’s set up so he has to call Dean, has to go to Dean in 9x10, and it’s awesome. I already covered that he saves Sam in 7x17 ostensibly for Dean and only later considers Sam on a personal level. 

I think the big examples are the season 12 set ups on Cas’s side to protect “the Winchesters” (all of them including and especially Mary in 12x09) and the “I love you - I love all of you” in 12x12 which definitely involves Dean first, then the rest, as a form of clarification, with 12x10′s message in between which is specifically about who Cas loves, and that specific message is in 13x04 as well, while the main message is a “sam and dean need me”, that’s specifically called out as the Bad Reason To Go Back, and I think put to bed at that point. Cas has to choose to go back for his own reasons, for what he loves and hates and all the things he has in his life he values on their own individual purposes, and what he stands to gain or lose, which is a hugely different message, and links back to 12x12 that this is where what he “loves” was made clear…. or not made clear. But “for SamnDean” was trounced utterly. That he can’t act on stock phrases about how much he cares for an abstract blob of Winchester and ties to that which is only an obligation which has been killing him for years. He has to WANT it and be accepted and understand it’s not just for what he can do for them, but that they accept him as family and he doesn’t have to feel that obligation to help them in order to deserve it. (And I think 13x06 was really important that Cas WASN’T required or necessary except that Dean wanted him there. That only his obligation to Jack affected anything.)

And the Mark of Cain arc which to me as a fandom newbie for season 10 as my first full season with everyone, and the end of season 9 just in time for all the big Destiel build up at the end, seems to tell it on Cas’s side that Dean is utterly different to Sam. There’s no fair comparison to Sam being in massive trouble and Cas reacting this way, but it’s hard to imagine he would, if Dean was still there to panic harder. 12x01 gave us that set up and Dean LET Cas worry “more” but he was still the one who snapped a guy’s phone in half in a panicked rage. Sam was once left with Cas and Dean in Purgatory and it was to emphasise his total loss. Dean’s never had to save Cas and Sam together and be put in that position. But season 9 and 10 put Cas and Sam together against Dean’s dark arc, and THAT was fascinating.

Breaking the format to make Sam and Cas work together about Dean gives us Sam and Cas talking constantly about Dean together, expressing their concerns and reacting in their own ways. It’s implicit in the first part of the arc and then clearly laid out in the last act with Cain’s list making the Colette comparison undeniably canon, but Cas and Sam are deliberately put in different places to Dean’s struggle, and react in their own ways - Sam right up in the sharp end of it dealing with being the potential Abel to Dean’s Cain (which, yikes, I can’t believe he SLEPT for a season and a half with Dean in the same Bunker as him :P) and Cas as the wife that a disproportionate amount of time was spent on in 9x11 to tell us Cain’s story.

Obviously, Sam and Cas are both invested in saving Dean, and frequently work together to do so, or work to a common purpose, e.g. Cas splitting off to deal with Metatron or find Cain in 9x23/the middle part of season 10, is easily decided common purpose and not weird or particularly telling in their character dynamic, but then when the pay off comes, obviously puts them in radically different places in their own narrative (the conclusion of Metatron’s “in love… with humanity” thing, or Cain sorting Sam, Cas and Crowley into his life story).

To me there are a few places which show up either Sam or Cas’s different level of investment in Dean which were really, really fascinating. 

In 9x18 and 9x22, Cas seems to know waaay better than Sam the danger of the Mark but Sam is in semi denial, and it takes a looong time - maybe even seeing Dean shout at him in the end of 9x22 - to really understand, while Cas is on high alert from the moment he finds out Dean has the Mark and asking Sam about it or to keep an eye on Dean. You can explain Cas knowing more about the Mark by being an angel, but Sam’s reaction of denial is part of his current relationship troubles with Dean, so Cas is being played off as being far more personally concerned (this coupled with Dean asking after Cas on the phone was a real shipper novelty in 9x22 - and the conversations at the end of that episode of course). It’s presumably a contrast to make us worried about Sam’s denial and how he’s been missing the cues all season, with the danger of Abaddon as well, as they’re the core relationship, but showing Dean irrationally furious with Sam but chill with Cas at the end of the episode is a strange note when you swing the camera around from focusing on the brothers and the tension of a brother-killing curse, and look at how Dean n Cas reflect in it.

In 10x01 we get[ a shot](http://subcas.tumblr.com/post/143671157994) I am never going to be over forever:

Sam and Cas are separated, and taking their arcs about saving Dean personally and through their own hurdles (Sam’s hurdle, unfortunately, kinda sucks and is borderline unwatchable these days for external reasons >.>) Cas gets this amazing arc with Hannah confronting everything about humanity and being an angel, and love and feelings and being tied to Earth… And it’s all focused down in Cas having an extremely romantic pining reaction to Dean going missing, this damsel in distress lying in bed with one knee poking out shot, conveniently fragile in this moment… (And they didn’t have to make him ill like this - they could have made him driven but burning up visibly a la Lucifer in season 5.)

This is contrasted to Sam’s montage of frantic action the season opens on, but for Cas it narrows down to “I miss him” and he’s allowed the emotion in that moment. His story is told separately and focuses on what he stands to lose and gain by choosing Dean, at a point in his story where that choice is not just there for him to make again, but defining his entire place in the universe after that choice. He chooses Dean, repeatedly, at the repeated loss of Hannah, who also represents Heaven, while Dean represents Earth and Humanity, and what all THAT means for Cas.

I love that Sam and Cas have separate storylines - I love the entire open of season 10 BECAUSE TFW are separate and each thing they do represents their own place in their journey. And the overlap between Cas and Dean’s stuff is pretty hilariously obvious, thematically and with “subtle” clues like them both getting told off by their respective romantic false leads for flashing them :P The narratives for all of them are different, but Cas and Dean’s are folded together to show the connection. Sam’s story is radically different, and lacks this entirely, whether it’s connections to Dean (he’s lost his) or mirrors to Cas’s search - they’re on entirely different paths.

The rest of season 10 builds up the Colette narrative, and I think we’ve written enough on 10x22 and 10x23 but suffice to say it had the “she asked me to stop” moment, and Cas making several sweeping declarations of eternal love that Dean was in no place to accept, while Sam went to confront an entirely different part of the story working on an entirely different personal level. And there ends a season and a half of comparing Cas and Sam’s reactions to Dean in emotional distress.

And there’s all the other obvious stuff, all the choices Cas is made to make for Dean against Heaven, or things where they just SAY Dean is his human weakness and single him out from Sam, or tbh should we really be over Cas saying “Dean” when ALL the Winchesters walked into the house in 12x23, or how Sam disappeared from the montage all about Cas and Dean in 13x05, while Dean and Cas got their well-earned stares at each other. That was a two way street - Dean obviously led the way in, but Cas was staring back at him without looking over at Sam all through that, and it was Dean he chose to call…

I don’t really know how to separate all this context of Cas’s story with Dean from Cas speaking in general about the Winchesters - of course he cares when Sam is in trouble, and if it’s a scenario involving both of them, he WILL mostly react to care about both of them. But in other situations when it’s not generic action but focused emotional moments, he gets a disproportionate amount of them about Dean, and still defaults to thinking about Dean first, because of course they have the much more developed and fascinating relationship. 

There’s also the fact that in MANY cases “the Winchesters” is code for “Dean”, particularly when angels are talking to Cas about them. 11x02 is a good example specifically because Dean calls and them snarking about it makes it clear the angels have Thoughts about Dean and Cas, shortly before they begin torturing him for information about the Winchesters in general. There’s no plot reason they’d specify Dean, in the way 9x22/9x23 is still about Cas trying to save Dean from the Mark and Dean’s death is plot relevant to all that, but this time Dean’s brought into it as an additional feature via the phonecall, and then Cas gets suggestively tortured >.> 

In 12x10 it’s the same deal - Cas and Ishim talk about humanity affecting them, but at the end of the day the story separates Dean out as the human weakness maybe just because he’s the one who showed up, but also there’s a WEALTH of their history implicit in the fight and its staging, and it means more to them personally, building on that arc, than it could ever if it had been about Sam and Cas. This is the season of it being persistently shown that Dean and Cas react far stronger about each other than Sam getting involved in their crap, in 12x10, 12x12, 12x19, 12x20 and 12x23, and a season which involved saving Sam in the first 2 episodes, and Sam and Dean in the middle, Cas in the late-middle, Dean in 12x11 for Sam and Rowena to deal with, and Mary at the end, we have a LOT of contrasts to how they all react to each other, and Dean and Cas already took the cake *before* Cas died and sent us into the 6 episode Destiel nonsense season 13 started on dealing with Dean’s grief. I don’t think 13x01-5 is any more important than 10x01-3 for Sam and Cas dealing with Dean, or 12x01-2 for Cas, Dean and Mary to deal with losing Sam. They all show us various things about the characters, and not things that disappear in other contexts. 

I mean, I am pretty sure I can find posts explaining why it’s still Destiel for almost *any* moment Cas is challenged over or defends “the Winchesters” as a group unit. Because Cas feels that relationship most keenly of them all, even if they have become his very strange little family and he loves all of them.


	18. Fans!

> **[neatt](http://neatt.tumblr.com/)**  asked:
> 
> what do you think fans symbolize in the show? circular narrative maybe? They're all over the place, especially desk fans and ceiling fans, but it's a really difficult thing to google/search for for obvious reasons

* * *

I think it depends on the setting a lot of the time - a lot of the industrial sets they’d use have them just because they’re a standard feature, and can add a lot more movement into a still background. A quick way to emphasise the type of room as well - not underground, in a factory and here’s the fan to prove it - in which case when things were working it was a way to keep the air moving and get rid of pollution in the room and now is like the sad ghost of what the building was. There’s a few of those that stand out to me but only in very dramatic moments such as 4x16

[Originally posted by castielamigos](https://tmblr.co/ZhRTPv1cuy4r9)

It was a huge feature of the room because it was a huge ass fan, and I haven’t really seen any meta about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was there because this is an enormously static episode. If you wanted to re-tell an episode of SPN as a stageplay and make no changes whatsoever to it, this one would pretty much just lift up and drop down in the new setting. The fan adds movement of light and shadows on everyone who goes in that room, or acts as a background to them, obviously all the Alastair and Dean stuff but not just them:

[Originally posted by lukearnold](https://tmblr.co/ZZkAIx1hgCchF)

([x](http://casciel.tumblr.com/post/135589572036/all-you-have-to-do-is-be-unafraid-for-the-first))

I think aside from that Bobby’s panic room had the most dramatic fan, which got used in some deliberately parallel scenes from season 4-6, starting with Sam’s detox in 4x21 as the most important:

[Originally posted by mooseleys](https://tmblr.co/ZfGnMxuXY9gA)

Again the room is very small and boring to look at when you clear out all the stuff except a bed, but it puts some movement and light into the room. The fan has that awesome devil trap grille, so it’s got an iconic look when it’s in a shot. 

I saw[ a nice post after 12x02](http://themegalosaurus.tumblr.com/post/152132934428) about Sam lying in his room with the fan over his head seeming to mirror him in 4x21 just from the overhead shot with a fan - 

it’s that sort of iconic moment that lingers and follows a character around, so you can invoke it again later with just a brief visual. In that case it made a lot of sense to remember 4x21 right after Sam reconnects with Mary properly, because the weight between them that season was what happened to Sam because of her deal, and it weighs between them the same way we get the scene with Dean in the kitchen struggling to reconcile the memory of Mary to the real thing, something relevant to his own plot with her that season. 

Actually, I giffed this (and sorry, this was among some of the first gifs I ever made so it’s weird and choppy) - thinking of randomly invoking old images in new contexts, in like… 6x07 or whatever number it is, one of the most un-loved season 6 episodes because it isn’t even bad it’s just *there* and kinda boring and no one seems to like the Campbell stuff, I got the impression they were using the background fan to invoke the visuals of 4x16, Dean vs Alastair again here:

because that’s where Dean has this big confrontation with Christan Campbell, who we don’t know is a demon yet, but I think we do by the end of the episode, but there was a looot of aggro between him and Dean even before that reveal, possibly just because the demon hated him too much to stay in character, and there was a huge thing made about them all knowing all the horrible stuff Dean did in Hell, which I think came up in 6x02, but in any case I once had a lot to say about this breaking it down a bit more, if you really want to go dig up my notes on this episode - I doubt there’s much in my tag for it… that was a really random example, sorry, it just happens to be something in my memory for actually knowing I wrote about it before :P 

I think overall though when there’s something where there’s LOADS of examples, picking a broad theme to apply to them might make sense if you can make a case on multiple examples, but I see them as background set pieces, and for desk fans etc it’s even harder to know if it’s just clutter to make the world seem lived in, or means something - I think the image has to linger on screen or make up a really important moment or be in an establishing shot to be clear it’s part of the imagery. Just otherwise you end up, ironically, talking in circles about a thing 

So I think picking set pieces where fans were a HUGE part of what was going on - for me 4x16 and 4x21 - and setting them as the bedrock of the imagery and how it connects to the characters, feels like a more certain way of guessing what it might mean or what it might be prompting us to remember. 

I suppose in that sense, the later iterations ARE a reminder that the story goes in circles, but it’s a more meta meaning that only catches up to them later. 

Bonus: Mel vs windmills <https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/tagged/windmills>


	19. Destiel isn't one sided in season 13

**Anonymous**  asked:

I remember once reading a post about how destiel pov is usually only on one character while the other looks disinterested and this is kind of the feeling I'm getting from s13 too Dean is all about Cas and mourning Cas and TFW and Cas is all "k. Bye". :/ im getting kinda uncomfortable since 12x19 with Dean crawling after Cas begging him to to choose them and Cas continuing to not do that (part of why I hoped Cas was brainwashed and not intentionally leaving Dean)

I hope that wasn’t my post because it was a little more complex than “one feels one way and the other looks disinterested”

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/165634856748/elizabethrobertajones-bluestar86>

I wrote this about how there’s a narrative POV about whose emotional arc is carrying Destiel. That doesn’t have to mean whoever has it is basically just shown to be unrequitedly pining. For example in season 4 you can comment a lot on how Cas seems to be falling for Dean before, you know, literally falling for him, but the POV of the season is entirely on Dean and the only Cas POV we get is stuff where he’s hanging out talking to other angels doing angel business and his personal arc stuff. There might be some incredible Destiel scenes like when he rebels in 4x22 but Dean’s the POV in the scenes even if Cas is the one reacting and doing stuff which is powering things along. Or 6x20 is entirely from Cas’s POV but we see Dean contribute plenty of angst to the drama and we still know how he feels, it’s not hard to guess when it’s written all over his face and how he struggles with what he’s discovering when we’ve been with him all season already, but every scene is given to us from Cas’s perspective because he’s narrating it.

I mean obviously there are times when one of them is emotionally unavailable such as the rest of season 6 being from Dean’s POV, or season 9 - 10 where Dean has the Mark and so the emotional arc is all on Cas’s shoulders… Again not because the other is completely void of feelings on the other side during these times, but because there’s a narrative device keeping them from expressing them or acting on them or whatever.

I’m pretty confused by the apparent reading a bunch of people have that Cas isn’t giving back feelings to Dean at the moment, which seems to have sprung out of lingering uncertainty about Cas’s state of being (which I just can’t see at the moment with any indications from the show that Cas is not himself in a fundamental way) or perhaps disappointment since the sneak peek for 13x06 that the reunion was understated. 

I feel like I just watched one of the most ridiculous stretches of non-stop Destiel nonsense the show has ever delivered, starting 12x19 and relying on both characters to tell it. 

Obviously we have Dean missing Cas in the build up to it, and Cas leaves as he does in the end of 12x19, and Dean continues angsting about it on the phone to Mary before shit hits the fan… Cas has the emotional POV in 12x19 but it relies on the theme of clarifying who you’re talking about and different levels of personal investment, which is only clarified in a bad way for Dean asking not to be included in Sam’s cheerful greeting of Cas, but then through the episode shows Cas and Dean still have a bigger personal investment in each other even when Cas only ever speaks about “sam and dean” as a unit. I don’t think that’s narrative POV on the Destiel arc because Dean’s still doing the heavy lifting, making it a weird episode where Cas has the POV but Dean has the Destiel POV, perhaps because of their epic misunderstandings about feelings which are a major major theme between them. But for all the generic concern thrown around, this episode had the mixtape exchange among all the other stuff between Cas and Dean when they were in the same room which made it clear they specifically focussed on each other. 

And obviously while 12x23 was from Sam and Dean’s POV (even stuff like Cas going into the AU world was cut off so that we could react with Sam and Dean to AU Bobby, not with Cas), and there was very little interaction, Cas still did that bizarre thing where all the living Winchesters piled into his house and he said “Dean,” followed by, again singling Dean out in his attention and healing him, which had also happened in the end of 12x19. Even if Cas is not the POV there’s things thrown in to show that in amongst everything else and Cas losing control of the narrative after he was Jacked, he still blatantly cares about Dean and that he and Dean single each other out.

I suppose the Dean POV on how he feels about Cas has been utterly utterly in your face this season so far which might be another reason why it seems like Cas is giving less back. I do think, though, that it has not ALL been on Dean. In 13x03 Jack wakes up Cas after Dean manages to clarify some feelings about Cas at least in relation to how Sam is feeling. It darkly mirrors 12x19 where Dean clarified that he was mad at Cas when he came in the door, but this time positively for his FEELINGS about Cas, even if he’s now screaming in Sam’s face about it. The clarification that he cares that much about Cas is something that has been hovering unsaid for a long time despite their entire history of being singled out for each other, it’s become more blatant as the family has become more integrated, and pretty much since season 9 when Dean had to ask Cas to leave the Bunker, the weight has been on his say on whether Cas is part of the family or not. Thematically, obviously. In the wider narrative. Sam does a lot to make Cas feel at home, in 8x22 and the start of season 11 just off the top of my head as moments when Sam and Cas & the Bunker as home were a thing, but it’s Dean who has the big dramatic say. The main emotional arc impact. It pretty much goes without saying that Sam will welcome Cas and make home comfy in the Bunker. There’s no issue there at all :P 

Anyway, Jack is overhearing Sam getting yelled at for not appreciating just how painful it is to look at him and only see Cas dying, and this creates the void of Cas in their lives in Jack’s heart powerful enough to nudge Cas in the Empty. I see it as Dean putting out this fact into the world for the first time, and that demanding an ANSWER. Cas waking up is a response to Dean making it clear how hurt he has been by Cas’s death. The theme of clarification, using your words, etc, has meant Dean has finally let words out that would have been awfully useful for Cas to know in life, and lo and behold he is awake. It’s a narrative question and answer to me. Dean feels this way about Cas - Cas is in the least possible state to ever find out, but now the story has changed, is this enough for Cas? And the answer is, yes, he wakes up now.

In the Empty Cas is challenged by the sleepy void about why he is awake, and it attempts to beat him and then his feelings into submission so that he will give up and go back to sleep. Dean off on the other side of the story is literally linked to Cas when he asks what linked all the victims - the answer is, their grief, and cut to Cas. Or when he says what is burned stays dead - and the answer is, no, look how Cas is doing over here, up and awake and wandering around and fighting to come back. Dean says he has no hope, and the obvious answer is, well you might not now but look who just woke up back on earth. I think it’s important to remember that narrative structure of Dean “interacting” with Cas in the Empty when talking about it because Dean is intrinsically linked to Cas over and over in 13x03 and 13x04 by his statements and the subsequent dramatic irony or narrative, like… eyebrow wiggling… they’re doing. (I’ll be honest, I have a headache so I can’t remember all my literature degree stuff :P) Because I think Jack just brought Cas back because of his OWN issues missing Cas and obviously what Kelly said about him being an angel to watch over him which he felt he was sorely lacking. But the way in which it all happens is tuned directly to Dean’s feelings.

And then we get, in the Empty, Cas’s little feelings. The Empty telling him he doesn’t want to go back, not in a dismissive way but in a I know how you feel and I know you don’t want to way. These scenes HAVE to be Cas’s emotional POV and if he won’t say it, the Empty will for him. It doesn’t matter if he’s not EXPRESSING these things for himself, the important thing is the scene is ABOUT Cas and it’s giving us an explanation of his emotions. That “Sam and Dean need me” is being put out there as Cas’s reason to go back despite the fact he doesn’t want to, that he’d shackle himself back to the same burden that got him killed, that in 12x19 we could see was destroying their relationship even BEFORE it got him killed. We’re getting a direct exploration of the things which last season kept Cas at an awful range of miscommunication to Dean. The stuff he never said to him or explained to Dean so badly Dean didn’t even get why he was saying it when it seemed too obvious to him that they all need to be together as a family and obviously Cas is family and obviously they should do everything side by side.

And so the Empty crouches down by Cas and says, “I know what you hate. I know who you love. I know what you fear,” with intonation that shows these concepts flow from the stuff they’ve already covered - Sam and Dean need me, nope that’s not it, I know this situation as it is inside your head and I am not scared to tell you what you’re thinking. That you hate being treated like this. You hate treating YOURSELF like this. I know who you love (and, incidentally, I’d know that you said already that you love all the Winchesters, because hi I’ve been inside your head so there’s nothing I don’t know). I know that there’s some secret that makes me drop my voice to a conspiratorial whisper to tell you that I know who you love, even though it’s just you and me awake in this whole wide Empty void of Nothing. Because to you it’s something deeper, something quieter, something less-spoken than anything you’ve voiced so far…

(Sidenote though - obviously it’s been voiced IN the narrative already and gets us no further than 4 years ago and “he’s in love…. with humanity!” etc because that entire build up was ENORMOUS and built up to the pay off… of what we got in 10x01-3, which obviously did not make Destiel canon or Cas’s feelings any clearer than a wistful comment about finding love on earth and wanting to stay, and then Cas left anyway and people were upset that Cas had left right when Dean seemed to be remotely operating his own feelings again and briefly had a moment of clarity to ask Cas to stay apparently in his room on his bed so look at how that has all carried on since season 10 and remember that I’m just analysing, not predicting, but also I have fandom deja vu about Cas’s feelings re: being so obvious they can be seen from space while he pines naked in bed for Dean, and then a big old kick back where everyone was furious he left with Hannah and Destiel is dead and Cas doesn’t love Dean any more >.>) 

\- and then the Empty says that he knows what Cas FEARS, why Cas keeps leaving, backing off, running away, taking on missions, doing things to protect Sam and Dean from afar because he can’t be with them, has to return Dean’s mixtape and go nobly fall on a sword. Because he’s SCARED about his feelings. Because he can’t be sure Dean WANTS him, only that Sam and Dean need him. He’s been literally given the Winchester Family Invitation on embossed paper with gold leaf, been through a couple of rounds of sacrificing for them - plural, Mary included - and them standing up for him and willing to die to protect him. He should not fear rejection from the family. He shouldn’t fear that his own feelings for them are not returned in full if it is about being a part of the family. At the end of season 11 Dean offered him being the 3rd Winchester brother (sorry Adam) on a plate as well, and Cas still looked unhappy and uncertain. 

This all ties into ALL of Cas’s arc for years and years, ever since 7x17, when he re-started his continuous time on the show with [a brief Destiel recap](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167327465697/okay-so-in-the-promo-sam-and-dean-use-led-zeppelin) and his struggles have all been continuous and with good continuity. His guilt about killing all the angels and damaging Heaven (made worse/freshly relevant with the angel fall spell but was caused by his angst about Godstiel, that he brings up in 8x08), his sense of belonging or not which really starts getting hammered home after he becomes human and loses his wings, so he’s more dependant on a home, and also after he’s been more and more often exiled or treated like shit by Heaven to make it clearer that if he is ever going to have a good sense of home again, the one on Earth is the kinder option, even for all the trouble he goes through for Sam and Dean. 

And his feelings for Dean, which are NOT a random subtext thing but seriously power much of his drama. 8x17 starting with him having to kill a thousand Deans. Or how he and Dean are linked by going through Purgatory together and the emotional revelations that came out there - that Dean wouldn’t leave without Cas but Cas didn’t think he deserved it, which ties up all his “general” arcs into the romantic one. That he deserves to be in Purgatory for what he did to Heaven, but that it will hurt Dean to do it. That he’s been self-punishing for Dean’s sake to keep him safe so that he can escape. Cas sacrifices for Dean again and again and in the end walks him to the portal and shoves him through it without attempting to follow because of how he feels; the romantic arc is intrinsic to his actions. 

Season 9 builds up Cas trying to restore Heaven and take down Metatron, but Metatron sows discord among Cas’s followers for Cas’s loyalty to Dean. They test it. He loses his followers. Metatron mocks and delights in Cas’s choices and his weakness for Dean. He tells Cas that his weakness WAS Dean in 9x23, without the “love” comment. And that Dean is dead. Cas fights back anyway, even against hope of losing Dean. 

In season 10, Cas’s arc is loosely that he’s adrift but will help those who need him - Hannah, Claire and of course Dean. Or Sam finding Dean. He pines and hangs on and gets compared to post-break up Crowley and in the main story his role is simply to be devoted to Dean, to want to save him, to be part of the family that would sacrifice and die for Dean. And an important link in the loose prophecy Cain gives Dean about his nearest and dearest of Crowley, Cas and Sam - each one a magnitude worse than the previous to hurt. 10x22 has Cas make that speech about how he’d be there with Dean at his side in horror as Dean murdered the world but he couldn’t kill him, he can only ask him to stop. Dean attacks and rejects him and for his troubles Cas gets turned into a mindless attack dog, a symbol of how he had been feeling all along, just doing these things for the Winchesters without being certain of his place in the family or his feelings being returned. In season 11 these last 2 points are the first of the PTSD flashbacks he gets about his recent treatment as he falls into deep depression and worthlessness, and the fact of his place in the family is a part of it - not that it can be cured by Dean finally telling him what he wants to hear, and for him to be all better as soon as he knows he’s loved. But it’s one of the factors causing it, and one of the reasons Cas got sucked along with the season 10 bad decisions and one of the reasons Cas has been isolating himself, and now begins the pattern of sacrificing himself too, in 11x10 where he says yes to Lucifer after being assured by everyone he meets that day that he’s just a useless tool. Except Dean, of course, but misunderstandings abound so there’s our read of Dean’s intention and our read of how Cas might have taken their parting. In any case, Cas manages to sacrifice twice in a row for the same possession in 11x14 too, now specifically for Dean. From there, the possession arc becomes laughably about Destiel in 11x18 and 11x21, and Dean’s focus on it in the in between episodes. 

And in season 12, of course, now we get the repeated theme of Cas leaving because he doesn’t feel he belongs, and his sense of not belonging and duty power together his search for Lucifer, which turns into the search for Kelly which turns into what happens with Jack in 12x19, but all that of course is because he’s been the one feeling responsible for the Lucifer arc, and whichever point you pick to start that from it goes back to 11x10 and his decision there, made for the same reasons he does everything in season 12, but with more loops of talking about family and where he belongs and Dean trying to reach across the gap but not finding the right words. The fact that after 12x12 Cas still feels he has to be the Winchesters’ guardian shows that they have not been able to reach the part of him which will be able to comfortably call them home no matter how much they feel he belongs there. 

For years and years and years this has been what Cas fears. When the Empty tells him he’s surrounded by all the thousands of dead angels, Cas looks around in utter horror, knowing that he’s responsible for them. Check one on his fears, openly expressed. The Empty mocks his attempt to say that Sam and Dean need him, as a bad reason to return, a hollow reason, and Cas’s fear is that they ONLY need him for what he can do, that they’d find a way to wake him up and get him back JUST because they NEEDED him for something. That he would claw his way back to life just to be used for some reason or another that is troubling them and that they can’t solve without calling in Cas to fix it and protect them. And then. His hates, loves and fears. Cas’s love for Dean in the most terrifying thing he has. He’s destroyed so much because of it. Rebelled because of it. Lost his faith because of it. Been dragged through things far worse than Hell and back because of it. And Dean won’t clarify his feelings for Cas, won’t speak in plain English and explain what he means, what Cas means. 

And in 13x03 he clarifies to Sam that Cas in particular is why he is in so much turmoil, and Cas wakes up. And faces the Empty mocking his feelings and pointing out his fears. That there is “nothing for you back there” despite all the gestures of home and family that have ever been offered to him. (And this sounds so much like the line in The Two Towers where Elrond is telling Arwen there’s nothing for her here, trying to convince her to LEAVE Middle Earth rather than be with Aragorn and die as a mortal.)

But Cas takes this and all the reminders of his failures and the horrific things that have happened to him, and he stands up and confronts the Empty, which is essentially the bad voice in his head, the depression, and all his fears and doubts, and tells it to stuff it and send him back. He realises whatever happened to him, the reason he’s awake has already given him the chance to reject the Empty trying to make him give up and go to sleep, and that he has been given another chance to fight. Not to reject everything the Empty says and have hope, but to fight and fight and fight. And be given another chance.

And that the confrontation involved a reminder that Cas has this secret love, that it covered all the reasons Cas has been brought down to this lowest point, is mirrored in the much *less* Destiel scene in 13x05 where Billie and Dean talk and Dean only mentions in passing that he couldn’t save Cas as part of the reason he’s given up, although of course the weight of everything else around it that built it all up and explained why (and his clarification that woke Cas up in 13x03) obviously makes it mean more than it might sound on the surface. But Cas’s confrontation with the Empty contains *all* of that that I just rambled about because it’s a Castiel, this is your life, moment, and the power of it is picking all the right words to express *everything* Cas has been through and why, and that includes his entire romance with Dean, and, sadly, what it has done to him to pine and feel unrequited all this time. In 10x01 when he’s lying in bed missing Dean, we have an emotionally similar scene but to much less dramatic effect, much less clarity, and distilling down the reasons. It’s mired in a lot of random context, and it is only really symbolically what this scene was pretty much directly. 

In the end of 13x05 Cas calls Dean and it’s silent but we know what it means to Dean. We have silence on Cas’s side of things - obviously the ball is in Dean’s court there on the emotional POV - but when we get Cas back, in 13x06, he is in *no way* “k, bye” 

I think the scenes have been fairly balanced in POV, with Cas explaining what happened to him from his perspective when he gets back when talking about the Empty and his line about annoying the Empty is nonsense to out of context ears but means a lot to us and Cas. The hugs being used to contrast Sam and Dean’s reactions, with Sam not knowing what to do but Dean saying “i do” and swooping in on Cas.

Remember, we have been inside Cas’s head, we’ve seen all his little feelings. We know what has brought him back, and why, and to what dramatic narrative purpose this serves - Dean’s grief about Cas being a 5 episode arc which ended up going right into a lowest point of Dean’s much longer personal arcs about loving Cas and how he feels about the job and family, and Cas’s much much longer ongoing personal arc, currently now starting a new chapter after reaching the lowest point in a story about once again passing through an afterlife to rebirth. But he accepted he would still have these issues, that he was only coming back to fight, that he wasn’t coming back because “Sam and Dean need me”… 

And for most of this reintroduction scene he doesn’t know that they didn’t do something to bring him back. Sam and Dean are stunned and Cas talks matter of fact about how they got back. Cas doesn’t know they’re reacting in complete and utter mystification. He doesn’t know how long he was gone, just that Dean thinks it’s too long. He has this conversation about where he was and what the Empty is like while clearly baffled about their intent and why Sam is asking these questions, until he says “I thought you had done something” and looks at Dean with realisation that they had genuinely thought he was dead and gone and not coming back and they had no clue - this is the first time he can look at them without wondering what they did, if there’s a price on their heads for doing it to him, etc. He no longer has to be concerned about them.

But it’s not just that. It’s that now he knows “Sam and Dean need me” is NOT the reason he was brought back. He called them up probably expecting to be thrown into their next big drama, something they’re overwhelmed with that only Cas can help them with, that he wasn’t just calling them because he’s getting back in touch with his family but that he’s going back into the battle. For them. To protect them or do something for them that they can’t do.

And instead he learns that Jack did it to him, and Sam and Dean aren’t responsible, and all they did was come to collect him and take him *home*. And the big drama he gets thrown into? Jack has found them a case in Dodge City and Dean is *delighted* to go play cowboys with Cas. Cas, freshly back from the dead, suddenly has Jack - a whole new set of issues, maybe, but at least the two of them on a personal level have a positive emotional connection that they both care about each other, though the levels of Jack needing a new guardian angel strike me as bad in the bigger picture, it’s good for Cas to have more people who care about him, and for Dean to proudly label their new family and for this sense of belonging to be automatically placed on them. 

I mean Cas’s head is probably spinning, given the issues he confronted, and then going back AGAINST ALL HOPE. That there was nothing for him back on Earth, just this struggle where he was going to go back to the Winchesters for whatever they needed him for, because he loves them, because he loves Dean, but deep down he has fears and secrets that have been messing with how he interacts with them. Have been screwing up everything for him, over and over. 

And then he gets dragged on a case where Dean’s a great fluffy ball of sunshine even when he’s an angry sleeper, somehow, and all he asks of Cas is to make some coffee, and wait for him to be alert enough to hang out with him, at which point he continues being utterly gleeful and playful, and Cas is beginning to relax, to wear the cowboy hat, to quote the movie at Dean, to feel comfortable at his side, playing along being a cowboy, saying all the ridiculous lines like howdy partner etc as they walk onto the crime scene. Cas has FUN with Dean. FUN. CASTIEL, ANGEL OF THE LORD, HAD FUN. He was acting PLAYFUL. 

And even when he’s being asked what his fake agent name is, he panics because this is all seeming a bit dangerous to keep playing around, he looks to Dean, Dean nods like it will all be fine and Cas says he’s Val Kilmer, and it works. Being playful never hurt anyone. Dean is DELIGHTED. Cas passes the test. This is all GREAT. Look at how few enormous burdens are on them! Sure things suck out in the wider scheme of the world, but nothing is currently actively trying to destroy it… 

This episode didn’t really have a directed POV on all the Destiel stuff because it was just the two of them existing in the same space. Most of the specific pointless (I say, to the main plot anyway) character beats were stuff between Cas and Dean. The hats. The coffee. The music. Even Jack asking Cas about how much Dean likes cowboys. Things that don’t really advance the story but we get silly things like Dean throwing Cas the gnawed hipbone or whatever. No one else is interacting like Dean and Cas interact. Sam and Jack have some interesting stuff going on, but they aren’t commanding a room when they’re in it. 

Like… I don’t *just* ship Destiel because they have interaction I like. I ship it because when they’re in a room, the writing itself supports that the two of them become the most important thing in it to each other. Dean lurks in the background of the Cas and Jack hug, while Sam disappears. Dean stands by Cas in the confrontation with Jack at the end of the episode - they’re on the same side. They’re together. There’s a *link* between them.

I really feel like people seeing Cas as dismissive and strange this episode instead of immediately picking up on Dean’s Cowboy Thing as a callback to 6x18 (whether he can hear the music or not, but personal interpretation, yes), and the query by Jack, the car conversation about them watching Tombstone together, is more reminders, more links between Cas *specifically* and Dean’s interest in cowboys. Cas’s face and his teasing is the same mood as “is it customary to wear a blanket” or telling Dean he looks like a lumberjack. Cas does not tease people very often. And it’s pretty much been Crowley a couple of times dismissively and Dean 3 times lovingly. And about his clothes. And 2/3rds of the time about cowboys. It’s a Thing.

I am just full of stunned love this episode for the way Dean and Cas act around each other, the comfort, the teasing, the absolute knowledge of each other. The things they share off screen and on screen. Cas always expresses less than Dean does, but this episode Cas willingly impersonated a cowboy for an entire 10 seconds while in Dean’s presence, quoted a movie at him, and sucked it up and used his ridiculous alias Dean told him to, while wearing the hat Dean made him wear. Cas loves Dean like the sun comes up in the morning. Maybe someone will be upset Dean messes with Cas and makes him do all this stuff, but this is Castiel Fucking Winchester who scowled down the Empty. I think he could stand up for himself about a straw hat :P

Anyway… tl;dr if that was my post you were thinking about, PLEASE do not interpret it as saying one of them always has to be pining. Sometimes they are just in love. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a narrative reason for it, and we just kinda enjoy the nonsense while another story - Jack’s story - is building up elsewhere. Dean and Cas’s interaction is a character-based subplot on its own, and it’s delightful right now. They can have issues again later, but between Sam saying “Jack” in the opening and the horrible end to the shoot out, Dean n Cas weren’t really doing anything other than enjoying each other’s company. And all the stuff that might have made it bad got swept away with the reveal Jack resurrected Cas, not Dean. Cas is temporarily (permanently hopefully) off the hook for being the angel that watches over them.

I mean it’s so not over, we’re 6 episodes in and all their pre-existing angst is just waiting to kick off again and never entirely *gone*, but this episode was weirdly peaceful for Dean and Cas. And they needed it. And I just do not understand at ALL people reading Cas as being dismissive and distant when he played cowboys with Dean.


	20. Mary Is At Least As Not A Terrible Parent As John Was

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> I just went through the A+ Parenting John Winchester tag and half of it is Mary hate ... I cannot believe how many people just completely missed the POINT of her storyline in S12

 

* * *

 

Ugh, so I went looking because curiosity can be a terrible thing, and it is mostly just directly comparing Mary’s behaviour in season 12 to John’s overall parenting as if they can be equivalent.

One of the examples is ironically the one I’d use to immediately UN-LINK them, because I think there WERE parallels but they were NOT straight on ones.

> Dean: How ‘bout for once, you just try to be a mom?   
> Mary: I am your mother, but I am not “just a mom.” And you are not a child. 

Like… For this you have to step out of seeing it from Dean’s POV or to immediately be defensive of the guys, and be empathetic for Mary instead. 

I mean I know I vowed to watch the season from her POV and got a wild, amazing ride out of it but not everyone is willing to do that, but it does make me sad that though it’s your right not to, sure. I feel like the season is MASSIVELY improved with the choice I made before it aired to keep on Mary’s side and be enthusiastic for her story, and I would have THOUGHT people would be at least interested in Mary as the so far silent character who shaped the entire narrative up to that point, and a beloved but venerated figure… I mean before the season we wrote reams of meta about how she was bringing her POV back to the story and we needed the deconstruction of Mary as a mother and it was necessary for her to be flawed and to hurt them by not being who they had dreamed she was as part of the longer ongoing process of their character development blah blah blah… Idk, over-optimistic that fandom in general would care about a flawed female character, but she is so ingrained in the story and beloved by Sam and Dean, that surely she would be one of the less problematic ones to care about? (Oh past!me…)

So anyway, ignoring Dean for the sake of this discussion in the sense that yes I know he’s hurt and this is one of the lines that Berens got me with this season that made me cry (on the show I never cry at, I’m beyond frustrated he brought me to tears 3 times this season :P) ON DEAN’S BEHALF so it’s a given I am deeply emotionally invested in him and understand his side completely, but I am just not talking about that now because I can go to both POVs and that’s not being a bad Dean fan that’s being interested in the wider story…

Mary’s line there is I think the key one that we need to understand that JOHN RAISED THEM, for their entire lives from Mary’s death until Sam ran away to Stanford and Dean was hunting on his own… but also in the last 3 episodes of season 1/2x01 he was kinda parenting them still, so basically until his own death he at least had the influence of being The Parent to them. The Higher Authority. And he compares how he raised them to being a drill sergeant. Dean says in 12x22 that John was “just a shell.” He emotionally vacated being their father and switched gears to revenge and hunting.

Obviously Mary has an arc in this season where she leaves to hunt and can’t face being with them and there’s PARALLELS to John leaving them to fend for themselves, but I think it’s jumping the gun to make them utterly equivalent in terms of abandonment. I think the fact is plain that although like Dean’s speech in 12x22 identifies she had a sum total responsibility because of her deal, she wasn’t PERSONALLY responsible for the way they were raised - that was what had happened to John because of her, but then he himself was the ONLY AVAILABLE CAREGIVER to them as children. Like, for the entire duration of the time that Mary was dead and they were children and John was raising them, he was the remaining responsible adult. 

I mean you could say if Mary died in a careless grease fire in the kitchen she was an idiot for throwing water on the stove but ultimately bad shit happens (especially when archangels are micromanaging your line for breeding purposes >.>) but John’s reaction in grief after he became the one solely responsible for their upbringing is the one that matters as a PARENTING choice. He was the one shaping them as children. The problem with John’s parenting and abandonment is specifically that it falls into the boundaries of child abuse by abandonment with a side order of “don’t raise them as soldiers” for their mental well-being. This was done to them by John as children and is the specific complaint about John’s parenting that I feel is worth exploring in the scars he left on them. I do think John is interesting and I can be sympathetic to the grief and his fear about the mytharc etc but I can be critical of how he handled it re: parenting because that’s specifically where he starts fucking up his kids - 1x18 showing us the worst example of seeming to use Sam as bait and Dean with the entire responsibility of protecting Sam from a monster aged “just a kid”. 

Mary comes to them when they are in their mid to late 30s and have endured and survived not just the growing up process but various coming of age and adulthood struggles and events and milestones. Plus all the apocalypses they’ve averted and people they’ve saved and monsters they’ve killed. They might suck at keeping non-take out food leftovers in the fridge of their creepy underground Bunker but they’ve essentially made it as adults :P Mary has emotional ties to them but she does not have ANY burden or responsibility to protect and raise them as children in season 12. She can be protective but because they are men she feels connected to as a mother. She struggles to relate to them because she’s used to Sam being an infant and Dean wanting the crusts cut off his PB&J and now they’re walking bundles of angst with a bunch of guns and knives on their persons, but she has also been a hunter and relates to THAT life so it’s not a shock to her at least that this is how hunters are. (If anything it makes them much easier for her to relate to as a safe common ground.)

Nothing she can do to hurt them can possibly equate to the damage John caused them because they are no longer children, and their relationship may be both fraught and crucial and meaningful to them, but it does not define and harm them in the same way that them spending their childhoods being raised poorly by John does. 

I’m not saying that’s a get out of jail free card for Mary to go around being careless with their feelings, I’m just saying it’s completely false to suggest Mary can harm them or be as bad a parent to them as John was.

In 12x22 Dean’s speech to her focuses largely on results in the grand scheme of the way her one choice with the deal hurt them, including big-picture blame on John being hurt by her and then that passing on the hurt to them, and in the end his hurt comes down to her ignoring him because she couldn’t face what she’d done, which to Dean was pretty much entirely in John’s harm to his upbringing, while for Sam it’s all the plot stuff and I’ve gone on and on about that all year because I was so excited for the Sam and Mary stuff to finally play out that, again, I was just tuned into it so everything that happened was completely thrilling and satisfying to me.

I think Dean went through some steps of struggling to reconcile a less motherly Mary but their story was pretty much all a reaction to everything else - the emotional story line to complement the main plot stuff, so he has his specific arc about abandonment and stuff to do with her, the need for a mother, but Mary’s issues are about Sam and the deal. 12x14 starts with the Dean and Mary blow out but ends up being about Sam and Mary and Mary’s desire to make the world without monsters seems to be more about what Sam can have because her guilt is more specific to the harm she caused Sam. The Dean stuff takes a lot of emotional centre stage because he has the stronger emotional links with just about everyone, as the core emotional POV character, so we got a LOT of him suffering about Mary in the first part of the season, which was good because it was all interesting character stuff for Dean. 

And it needed to go where it did in 12x22 because I think something people are struggling with and I see a lot is the idea that that speech was “just” a stand in for Dean dealing with his issues with John - that after all the narrative about father and son drama over the seasons and showing over and over how John had fucked them up, the problem was that Dean (and Sam) never addressed how Mary was the root cause of it, that she had lead to their fucked up lives. When they have to deal with it in the few relevant episodes in season 4 and 5 they’re quick to forgive her because she’s their mom and she’s still saintly and it’s all tragic and we understand blah blah blah, and get back to struggling with reconciling young!John to the man who raised them. There’s a sort of implied, but of course Mary is perfect there. 

I think the speech in 12x22 taken just as between Dean and Mary, ABOUT Dean and Mary, can be seen as addressing far more than just how John hurt them. Of course it’s about how the entire narrative was Mary’s fault and how that hurt them. But it’s for Dean to reconcile Mary into his life. And there was no strong narrative about her for like 10 seasons or more between (and when it was it was because she was the object they were getting revenge for) so it doesn’t have the same apparent build up and weight as getting reconciled with the memory of John, but that doesn’t mean it’s not huge and important, it means the storytelling for waaaay too long skipped over looking critically at Mary and humanising her and giving her a side and a voice as a character… Taking it not just as an apology for the past but as for how the two characters can reconcile and move FORWARDS together and create their family anew seemed to be the strongest message to me. That this was ABOUT Dean and Mary as they are NOW as much as how they were in the past. That she had to be taken out of this heaven memory setting where Dean was a child and Sam was a baby, and to SEE them for what they were, so that they could connect as adults. 

And I was talking to [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) about this (who had been talking to [@neven-ebrez](https://tmblr.co/mRFCt_tNo_vLQW2MDxeT8zg) about it :P) and she said, which is basically where the last paragraph was going next but much better than I’d have thought it,

> One thing we talked about was how it seems to be older women and especially mothers who “got Mary” right away  
> mothers essentially give up their own lives for the kids when they’re little, and then reach a point where they begin to reclaim themselves  
> and mary seemed torn between that early state of wanting to give up herself for those little boys she’d just left behind, but also suddenly confronted with two adult men who didn’t even need her to give herself over to them at all  
> In reality that process happens over YEARS, but for Mary it felt like it happened in an instant  
> and she missed everything in between. Not only that, everything in between was quite the horror show (which she found out reading John’s journal at the end of 12.02)  
> And she’s still got the feeling of WANTING what she’d lost in 1983, that Happy Families portrait of motherhood and raising her kids to be normal, but it’s at odds with everything she’s suddenly left with.  
> Nothing turned out how she’d wanted it, and at the root of that she felt responsible for ALL of it because of her deal with Azazel.  
> So this early-childhood form of motherhood merged with this Mama Bear Protect At All Costs mission when she joined up with the MoL, buying into their “a world without monsters” campaign in a really misguided attempt to give her boys the life she’d failed to before, where Sam could go to college and Dean could have a life or whatever  
> Because the logic driving her all along was that SHE FAILED the first time around and could never make that up to them  
> But she could make it so that they’d never have to hunt again…  
> even if that’s not what they want, or how their understanding of the world works

Essentially, Mary’s own struggles to reconcile the past with the present. Of what she’d been abruptly forced into and what she had lost in the Sam and Dean from her heaven/memory of them before her death. And again, because Sam and Dean are not tiny children any more, is really important to understanding all the character dynamics. 

I think there’s a terrible tendency to see their dynamics as they were when they were originally set up, which is why you have brothers fans harping back on season 1… With Mary they literally gave her the set up that she’s harping on where they once were, and 12x22 shows her still stuck there as she tried to reconcile past and present, and then she MOVES ON from it. She sees Dean. She pulls herself out of the brainwashing, and she saves him from Ketch. 

Obviously they still have issues and there’s a lot to address, hopefully which will be in the next season and they’ll find new ways to explore it all. But I think with Mary they really analysed her to ask what would be the biggest hurdles to her abruptly appearing in the present from where she left off as a character in the Pilot and everything we learned about her since. They examined it from HER POV and worked out what would hurt her the most. What she would need to overcome to function as a part of the CURRENT family. And then built a narrative intended from Mary’s side to bring her back into the fold in a meaningful way for what SHE needed.

I think there’s a far more intelligent arc going on in Mary’s season 12 story than that oh no she’s a terrible parent too. And I think part of the issue is that when it comes to John, he fills all that time when he was PARENTING his children, and all the intervening time where he’s the shadowy parental figure and she’s got nothing to do with it, while Mary has arrived beyond their need for her as a mother in the sense of all they missed out on without her. But as a person, and as someone who deeply cares about them and will act towards them as a mother to adult sons, that was her growth arc this season.

And the lack of her motherly influence on their lives SHOWS and there WAS a sort of growing up arc for Sam and Dean this season, and sense of needing and understanding her where it was forced to the surface that she wasn’t behaving this way, and Sam and Dean’s lack of her as that figure when they were children was a part of the narrative, and one that stood out and I think made her behaviour probably harder for people to swallow if they were EXPECTING her to kiss their boo boos, because there IS a lack of that in their story. It’s just that they have to move on to relating to her as adults and accept that part of their relationship never happened or never got past where it got to when Dean was 4 (and I think why Sam had a relatively easier time with her because she was an utter stranger in terms of understanding what a mother does. And why on the flip side Dean was the one who went into her mind in 12x22 and saw what he saw of his own childhood from her eyes.)

I find it kind of horrifying to imagine the sort of Mary people seemed to want or expect her to be, the one who would make them sandwiches and kiss their boo boos, and I think that Mary is found in 2x20 - the wishverse version of Mary, who was NOT an AU version of herself, but something Dean conjured up, and she basically did cater to his every whim, and was soft and sweet to him, at the total expense of her own history and personality. 2x21, the very next episode, begins the deconstruction of Mary from SAM’s POV because Azazel shows him that Mary recognised him on the night she died, meaning the wishverse one could never have existed and that this fate was always coming to them one way or another (and like the AU premise of a world where she never made her deal in 12x23 vindicates Mary’s choices, 2x20/21 in a way vindicates John’s parenting at least on the side of “better to have raised them as warriors than let the sorry jocks from the wishverse get devoured by demons”). 

Anyway. I think the wishful version of Mary is NOT a real character, although it showed us in Dean’s head this was his projection and desire for her. It’s also I think a problem for the audience to realise this and reconcile that that version of Mary never existed, that it’s how she was when she was treating Dean as a 4 year old because he WAS, and not how she might have grown to treat them if she was there all through their lives.

I mean, essentially it’s painful for us to realise our parents are flawed and have no idea what they’re doing, so is the over reaction that Mary in season 12 is as bad as John really just that people are projecting their disappointment about Mary into turning her into the worst person ever? I think he story was powerful and moving, and taken from her POV, exactly what they needed to do with her.


	21. Dean's first love?

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> can we classify cas as dean's first love tho? i mean there's cassie and then there's lisa, and what abt that girl robin from s9? dont they count? dean ofc is cas's first & only 😉💖

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I think Robin and Cassie count, but Lisa comes at a really weird time where I think Dean only starts to maybe be kinda in love with her from season 3 onwards, as a fantasy of unattainable retirement, and while I think they’re sweet and relatively healthy and she fed him up so he was all square and hug-shaped at the start of season 6, they do have a very comfortable, domestic sort of love that I think involves a lot of idealism of Dean seeing her and Ben as filling a family shaped hole he has, and she sees him as a hero which is kind of incompatible with keeping him if she’s happy to encourage him to go hunt at first and SO understanding of all his angst… Anyways, comes across as maybe a first serious adult love maybe but Robin or Cassie seem to be the ones we call first loves because he really got squishy for them when he was younger, but although he met Cassie and Lisa probably within the same year, it’s really the discovery of Ben that makes Lisa stand out to him as more than “gumby girl” and him saving Ben that makes her look at him again as more than just one of the losers from her past when she doesn’t understand him as obviously more than just one of the guys who is her type… 

Anyways not that I really feel like the first love thing is a direct parallel to Destiel because of that, but Cas is to Dean the first person to really get through his armour and that even though he tries to connect with Cassie by telling her about monsters and does have his more emotional relationship with Lisa going on from her finding out about his job, obviously Cas is the first to really truly know him for who he is and Dean to bond with someone and let them in in turn because Cas is there for so much of the worst of Dean, and it’s a very mature, developed sort of love where they build it up over a long period of time of testing and breaking and getting deep under each others’ skin.

(I tracked that for a long whiles on my [Dean n Cas are in love](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/dean-and-cas-are-in-love) series, which I actually have sort of forgotten about in the current general brainlessness of my life >.> But I got to the end of season 7, just talking through the development of their relationship)

I mean Claire and Kaia are a sort of exploding firework instant attraction and mutual curiosity and all. They know shit about each other but they understand everything and will immediately after one day die for each other. It’s very teenage angsty full drama let the hormones lead the way sort of emotional love, the sort of wildness that made Dean think he could tell Cassie about monsters more than anything we see with Dean and Cas, where even the very earliest signs in their relationship are more like deep mutual philosophy and care, but at the same time there’s a healthy chunk of detachment and obligation and doubt, so they come at each other in a very cautious way. I guess you could say the conversation at the park in 4x07 is somewhat equivalent to the scar conversation between Claire and Kaia… But yeah, it’s not really a comparable development when it comes to being struck fast. 

I guess Cas is the one who is more instantly fascinated and altered by his interaction with Dean - between the “what’s the matter? you don’t think you deserve to be saved?” and the look when he goes to take Dean home from the past in 4x03, he starts showing cracks of curiosity and concern way beyond his duty which are the gaps Dean levers to make him fall eventually… Maybe for CAS that’s a fast first love striking him hard out of the blue :P I mean he could fall in love with Dean for the first time at the end of this season and proportionately to how long he’s lived that’s a long ass time to make it look like it’s hitting hard and fast from a detached view… But nah, like, 2 minutes talking in person did it XD

Anyway there’s nooooothing inherently wrong with someone not being another person’s first love and it’s actually really unhealthy to sell the idea that there’s a perfect love you have to have and once you have that one that’s it… A lot of people get trapped in terrible relationships they started because it was their first crush and they never learned better… I think Dean as a scrappy, messy human needed all the practice he could get before dealing with being married to a pissy angel of the lord :P 


End file.
